Health care in the U.S. is a $2.7 trillion dollar business; as mentioned in an article in the New York Times about who was making big money. It is definitely not the doctors, nor the people who have the most contact with sick people—nurses, EMTs, and those further down the chain. It is insurance companies.
In a deal that is not unusual in the industry, Mark T. Bertolini, the chief executive of Aetna, earned a salary of about $977,000 in 2012 but a total compensation package of over $36 million, the bulk of it from stocks vested and options he exercised that year.
The anti-Obamacare rhetoric has made a hue and cry against a "government takeover" of medicine. Obama had to remove the "public option"; Republicans prevented the government from fielding a team and getting into the game. Instead, they have had an insurance company takeover of medicine. It's not the government that's coming between doctor and patient, it's the insurance companies.
Doctors are beginning to resist: Last month, 75 doctors in northern Wisconsin [demanded] ... health reforms ... requiring that 95 percent of insurance premiums be used on medical care. The movement was ignited when a surgeon, Dr. Hans Rechsteiner, discovered that a brief outpatient appendectomy he had performed for a fee of $1,700 generated over $12,000 in hospital bills, including $6,500 for operating room and recovery room charges.
References:
Jay Livingston, June 2014
Hannah Punitha (IRDA Licence Number: 2710062)
Source: Medindia
