One might argue that (up to a point) this justly represents the cost of administering the patient's insurance claim, whereas the patient who pays cash is only charged the cost of treatment and does not incur any administrative overhead.
Probably so; it depends how much bureaucratic overhead is imposed upon the medical professional. This might seem selfish, but secretarial services ain't free and time spent filling out claim forms is time that could be used in seeing patients.
Then again, you might argue that some medical professionals make so much anyway they should just eat the overhead as a cost of doing business, but that's a different discussion.
