UnitedHealth CEO shot

Mr. Sparkle said
I look at it from the angle of the legal profession - for decades the "billable hour" was the only way anyone billed and clients absorbed all the inefficiency and frankly overbilling that went on. It's still the predominant model but you see a lot more fee for services arrangements now - $10K to get through summary judgement phase, $25K if it goes to trial, etc., as opposed to an open-ended meter running for every 6 minutes that any person inside the firm ever spends thinking about your case.

The anesthesiologists are still on the billable hour. Obviously they don't want anyone messing with it.

Then there's the fact that Obamacare made it (health insurance) into a cartel, removing any real competition - there is no longer any option to provide "cheap" insurance (to cover only catastrophic losses). They all must cover pre-existing conditions. Must carry adult children until they're 26, etc. So now every insurer must cover a larger set of services (with the requisite staff and administration that comes with it) and providers know it all MUST be covered, so there is a lot less pricing power.

Plus, doctors enjoy a wonderful reputation so they are immune to the Eat the Rich sentiment that is prevalent in every other aspect of our population.

An interesting thing I've noticed recently on sort of "Eat the Rich" sites, is more and more people commenting on the salaries of anesthesiologists and radiologists. And relatively benign hours many of them have. However, doctors tend to fit into a model most people understand -- it scales relatively closely to what people think is "fair", a combination of the skill involved, and training time, along with understanding the value they provide - I think people are generally ok with smart people, who spent a lot of time and effort gaining their skills, and providing a service they understand the value of, making a lot of money. Although close a million dollars for 1200 billable hours in some cases, may be pushing it.

The challenge with health care reform is, if you don't mandate coverage for pre-existing conditions, then health insurance loses a lot of value, to the individual and society (ie, any insurance that covers pre-existing conditions will see only sick people on it, jacking the price up; also an insurance company will have an incentive to drop you as soon as you get sick, which of course reduces the value of insurance in the first place). And if you mandate pre-existing conditions but allow healthy people to opt out, then they game the system and only sign up when they need it, and jack the price up for everyone.