Hang on. The comment you're replying to is complaining that they can't get a price for a single test, a discrete unit of health care. That's not like not being able to get a price for a completed Rails app; it's like not being able to get a price for a Macbook. I think you've moved the goalposts a little.
I did say that lab tests have less variability, which means they should be easier to price. My guess is that the reason the OP had so much trouble getting a price is because the lab simply doesn't work that way. It doesn't have a consumer price list; instead they do the work first, then determine which insurer to send the claim to, and then sometime later get paid whatever the insurer has set the standard reimbursement to be.
What the OP found on the 10th attempt to get a price was somebody who was willing to look up claims for other people who had the same test, determine what the reimbursements were, and let him know the cross-insurer range of those amounts. Or maybe the range was over the claims sent to the insurance companies, rather than the amounts the insurers actually paid. If that's the case, then the range reflects actually differences in the test processing rather than differences in the insurers.
