We don't, at least not usually. The mission design is for the satellite to go up to 80,000 km where it will do an orbital plane change then settle back down into a geostationary orbit. It actually uses less energy to do it that way than to just do an apogee raise up to GEO then a plane change.
You're right of course, although I would argue that the difference between 1/11 the distance to the moon (geostationary orbit) and 1/4 the distance to the moon are not off by an order of magnitude, compared to LEO or other lower orbits.