And human medical procedures that aren't typically covered by insurance. LASIK for example, imagine what laser eye surgery would cost if it was billed like an ACL reconstruction. Instead you have to pay yourself and doctors compete, the entire bill (at a nice place) ends up being what a couple of ACL knives cost.
Gah, excellent point. Elective retail procedures such as vision improvement surgery and dental crowns, bonding, veneers, etc., all seem to top out around the average FSA limits of $5,000 or so. It's especially notable around the end of the year when advertisements encouraging people not to waste their FSA funds start picking up on the radio.
Now that the IRS has apparently imposed a limit of $2,500 on FSA deductions, I wonder if that's going to create pricing pressure on the "high end" procedures such as custom/wave/whatever LASIK here in the USA.
If I weren't a lazy sod, I'd look up capital equipment costs for medical procedures such as those and compare them to MRI, EKG, and other items used primarily for "need" based, insurance paid, procedures.
(Actually, I haven't used any fancyhands requests in a couple months. I'll be lazy and have someone google for me.)
It's not as simple as insurance alone driving the cost, but having a throat to choke if something goes wrong does contribute to it.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, random overhead is covered in weird places, as well.