The president of United has received bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars several times in the last decade, if I am not mistaken. One person. This is obscene.
There does need to be a standard. I wouldn't argue as much about the CPT as ICD codes. They were not designed for medical use. They were taxonomy codes. And where did this concept of 3,4,5 digit code that we can't pay you if there are not enough digits.
Sometimes it's not the system (CPT,ICD) but how it's used. This goes back to the insurance companies.
If we are really trying to cut the fat out of the medical system, why would we have over 400 companies, each with their own rules and burocracies? It would appear that the insurance companies are trying to confuse the physician, the patient and the employers. It's not designed for better information flow, but rather to make it more difficult to understand.
