This isn't for lack of pricing data. Hospitals know what they've paid for procedures previously. Every patient and procedure is different but it's rarely very different.
If a hospital has to bill a patient without insurance, what they charge should be pegged to a historical average for the baseline procedure.
Forcing us to negotiate puts undue burden on the patient. It's bad enough I have to occasionally call to keep my prices the same for cable and phone services.
I've been a military dependent my entire life first under my father, then under my husband. I've essentially never dealt with American medical insurance. The military system is basically a different medical system.
There are probably other Americans who don't really know how it works either.
The military needs its own medical assets so it can treat soldiers in times of war. For security purposes, it needs medical facilities and medical personnel under its own control. It isn't sufficient for there to be sufficient civilian facilities.
Military dependents get free medical care in part to keep doctors busy with real cases during peace time.
Military members and their dependents cannot file malpractice suits. There are people who are very unhappy with this fact. Mistakes do happen. When they happen, you don't have recourse to sue and this is a point of contention for some people.
They also have world class facilities. If something goes seriously wrong, you can get referred to one of their regional hospitals.
I'm alive in part because we happened to be stationed at a base with a regional hospital when things went badly sideways for me. It served military personnel in eight states. It was a teaching hospital with connections to UC-Davis Medical in Sacramento and, I think, Stanford in San Francisco. I had testing in both cities. I got a cutting edge diagnosis. That was a turning point in my life.
For the record, I think we need a single payer system in the US. The current civilian medical system is seriously broken.
What's the point of having access to world class facilities during combat, if you're just left to fend for yourself when you return home?
I'm not saying that means it didn't happen--things like this are incredibly common--but a reply suggesting you might not have described the full picture and it's possible there is no fraud is not completely out of line or an insult to your intelligence. (I upvoted your original comment, BTW.)