Certainly anesthesia can be administered under a capitated system. By definition of capitation, it is average care: that is, the cost is averaged to what it would take for the average Anesthesiologist to do a average length case. What if: the Patient is not average, i.e. Coronary Disease, Significant pulmonary disease, Recent CVA, etc? I don't think the capitated system allows for the extra monitoring required to make this a safe and effective anesthetic! Certainly an average anesthetic can be done on these patients without the monitoring, but a good anesthetic?!?? What if the surgeon is slower than molasses? should the patient suffer by getting cheaper, less effective drugs because the case is longer than average...a below average anesthetic results! Thus, averaged time/capitation would result in average or below average care, unless the case is very fast and the patient is in excellent health...what a pipe dream!