Home Forums Discussions Problems What were the top healthcare CEO salaries last year?

Posting this under "problems".
My favorite quote: ?Not everyone can step up and step into running a healthcare system with 25 to 50 hospitals. It?s a heck of a complex job.?

Wendell Potter, former public relations executive for Cigna, where CEO David Cordani raked in a $14.5 million salary in 2014, said, ?There?s no doubt that one of the reasons why Americans pay more for health insurance and for healthcare than people in any other country in the world is because of this high executive compensation.?

The gap between CEO and workers exists in all industries. But it is at a record high compared to the past. I think the current ratio is 450:1 (CEO:average employee). Back in the 70's, it was more like 30:1 which most people found reasonable.

It's only because his name is Wendell

There are ones that make more than that. See my post under "Why are Americans willing to pay so much for healthcare" in Quora. I wrote a novel. But, the short answer there would have just been, "We aren't willing. We have no choice."

The healthcare companies have played the clueless Obama administration like an untuned fiddle: LA Times

When you look at some of these companies, their "rap sheet" reads like that of a crime syndicate. For instance, Tenet Healthcare (#10 on Jon's list):
1994 - settled fraud charges with 28 states: $380 million fine & guilty pleas on 8 criminal counts
2004 - $395 million paid to 769 patients for unnecessary surgeries & $54 million fine to the State of California
2006 - $725 million fine & gave up $175 million of Medicare payments for over-billing Medicare claims
2008-2011 - spent $3.43 million on lobbying, paid no taxes, received $48 million in tax rebates, despite $415 million profit and top 5 executives received $24 million/year

Then there's this:
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini: $15 million
Bertolini's 2014 base salary was $996,169, according to Aetna's SEC filing. He also earned nearly $1.7 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, nearly $400,000 in other compensation and close to $12 million in stock and option awards. Bertolini earned more than twice as much in 2013--$30.7 million--thanks to nearly $28 million in stocks and options.

Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish: $13.5 million
Swedish received a base salary of $1.25 million in 2014, according to Anthem's SEC filing. In addition, he earned more than $2.1 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, about $140,000 in other compensation and $10 million in stock and option awards. Swedish earned nearly $17 million in 2013.

Cigna CEO David Cordani: $14.5 milion
The Cigna SEC filing indicated that Cordani received a base salary of $1.125 million in 2014, along with $1.9 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, about $240,000 in other compensation and $11 million in stock and option awards. This compares to $12.9 million in 2012 and $13.5 million in 2013.

Humana CEO Bruce Broussard: $10.1 million
Broussard took home a base salary of more than $1.1 million in 2014, his first full year as both the company's CEO and president, according to Humana's SEC filing. He also earned nearly $1.7 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, close to $600,000 in other compensation and about $6.75 million in stock and option awards. Broussard earned $8.8 million in 2013 and $2.8 million in 2012, his first full year as president of Humana.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Helmsley: $14.9 million
Helmsley's 2014 base salary was $1.3 million, according to UnitedHealth's SEC filing. On top of that, he earned nearly $4 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, more than $100,000 in other compensation and about $9.5 million in stocks and options. Helmsley earned $12 million in 2013 and nearly $13.9 million in 2012.

That's about 68.3 MILLION dollars. That's just the CEOs, not including the rest of administrators.

How much health care could that buy?

So, enough of the complaining.
What are we going to do about it?
And really, the CEO's ARE smarter -- they always manage to make it look like the doctors are to blame for whatever goes wrong with medical care.

I wish I could answer that, Tom. It seems so hopeless.

Whenever I speak to a reviewer (usually a physician or pharmacist) who works for an insurance company, calling to deny my request for a test or med for one of my patients, I quote them from Solzhenitsyn: "Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors?" They usually laugh (although one neurologist recently got upset and lectured me about "respect").

We are reduced to passive resistance, I fear. Oh well, as Gandhi said: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." One can only hope...

John -- please don't give up.
Nor do I believe "passive resistance" will get us anything.
Ghandi never advocated "passivity" -- just "non-violence".

Until about 1980, doctors were really "captain of the ship" -- and there were problems with doctors being overbearing and greedy.
The reaction has resulted in the "industrialization" of medicine and creation of something call "Healthcare". The insurance "industry" has become the master rather than the servant, and the CEO (of insurance companies, hospitals, etc) have become the "captains."
The same thing has happened -- in a parallel way -- in public education.

Not many doctors seem to know, or even care, how this revolution occurred, or how it might be reversed -- but it is that indifference that upsets me far more than the mere occurrence of revolution. Patient care is being degraded far more by industrialization and commodification than it ever was by the excesses of physician cupidity under the pre-industrial system.

We each need to start somewhere -- like each lone Satyagrahi. The patients don't like what is going on -- and they are imploring the doctors to lead. We must somehow rise to that challenge.

The rationale behind these salaries is that these highly compensated CEOs make their salaries and more for their companies.

This may or may not be true. I'm inclined to believe that it isn't. I'm inclined to believe that many other candidates could perform comparably or perhaps even better. But maybe not. Maybe in our society people are too obsessed about having more than their neighbor, too obsessed with Real Housewives, and not obsessed enough with being their own person with dignity to the point that having these CEOs who lack any sort of humility and who frequently tout their value and uniqueness is the optimal choice to run many of our companies.

Fun fact, the CEO/founder of Zappos makes less than $50k (granted, his company is worth a little under a billion). He lives in a trailer park which he has made into a sort of tech community.

The Zappos CEO also funded a new primary care clinic in Las Vegas as part of the Downtown Project. He hired this guy to head it:
Zubin Damania , the rapping doctor.

I'm an outsider in one respect, and a collaborator in another.

After my upgrade video, the next film piece we will publish is a long-time client who presented in Laramie, who is choosing to practice medicine differently, and who lays out how other physicians can follow his example without having to give up their existing model and structure.

Physicians, in most cases, have both the means and the opportunity to change the dynamic, because patients trust their physicians, and in the world of high deductibles, that relation can reign supreme again.

I'm hopeful that when we start setting up clinics to prove the new model, that Donna will show up!

My model continues to evolve, and at some point will be a cash only /subscription based model. Zubin's 20 minute video is worth watching, discusses primary care docs turning into zombies, and he says "insurance has no place in primary care". I concur.