Getting the termination fees raised to break-even does not make everyone's life suck more. The alternative is to have that $150 increment added to the handset purchase price, which is closer to making everyone's life suck more.
There's no free lunch. Somehow you're going to pay the full price for your iPhone. The higher monthly bill and higher early termination fee you're willing to pay, the lower the upfront cost can be, which some would argue is making people's lives better, not worse.
I would personally prefer to buy an unsubsidized phone (and have correspondingly lower monthly bills, and a tiny or zero early-term fee), but that's not how the US mobile market works, at least not for the device I prefer, and choice of device is more important to me than choice of contract terms.
Why would it make people's lives worse to have price transparency both on devices and on mobile phone contracts?
Around here (i.e. Europe), you can get an iPhone 4 (24x25EUR) and the corresponding phone contract (20EUR/month), either together (which would give the well-known 45EUR/month) or separately from each other. You can cancel or change the phone contract later and only pay for the phone, if you want - in any case, you know which is which, and it makes it a lot easier to compare both contracts and device prices.
No early termination fees necessary. It's just the US mobile market being bogged down from being under the control of an oligopoly of non-competitive companies.
There's no free lunch. Somehow you're going to pay the full price for your iPhone. The higher monthly bill and higher early termination fee you're willing to pay, the lower the upfront cost can be, which some would argue is making people's lives better, not worse.
I would personally prefer to buy an unsubsidized phone (and have correspondingly lower monthly bills, and a tiny or zero early-term fee), but that's not how the US mobile market works, at least not for the device I prefer, and choice of device is more important to me than choice of contract terms.