Everybody who buys a 17" Epson professional printer is essentially buying a print head. The print head is pre-installed and needs a technician to replace it; if you need to replace it, by the time you net out the value of ink with a new printer you may as well buy a new printer. So this is nothing new.
The Canon Pro-1000 print head is user-replaceable - in fact you install it as you install the inks when you set the printer up. As for the price, where did you get that price from? It would be way too soon for people to be replacing printheads, as the printer just hit the market. For other professional Canon printer models the print heads were in the range of USD 400~500, so USD 1300 seems rather out of line.