The funny thing is that dental care in the US is the exact opposite. If you ask $RANDOM_DENTAI_CLINIC what the cost for $RANDOM_PROCEDURE will be, they can quote you a price that will generally be pretty accurate.
I'm told this came about because historically more people had to pay for dental services out of pocket, so dental offices were used to having standard fees that they could just look up.
Also most dental insurance will only pay up to $10-5k total per year, so its not some unlimited spout of money you can abuse like medical insurance in the USA. Some dentists offer a direct subscription plan that costs around the same amount of costs as a dental plan directly as a result.
Sounds like dental care in Canada.