Dispersion isn't the only consideration in designing a midrange add-on. Spending up to £100 on a driver, half as much again on a crossover and then not making the most of its benefits by crossing over as high as 1k doesn't make a lot of sense. It wouldn't surprise me, however, if a lot of commercial bass cabs are crossed over that high in order to reduce the cost of the crossover. For the current crop of PA midrange drivers 600Hz is usually good, although there is a lot more than you might imagine to getting the crossover point right: much depends on the drivers you are using.
There are currently some very good, low-cost midrange drivers available - from Celestion in particular - which could form the basis of a cheap midrange add-on. Unfortunately, designing a passive crossover is not an undertaking for the faint-hearted and, as Lfalex points out, an active solution would be complex, requiring asymmetrical slopes, phase compensation and frequency response shaping (all of which is relatively easy to achieve with a passive solution) - not to mention an additional power amp.
The benefits of having a separate midrange driver are very worthwhile, however, and I'd never want to be without mine.