The fine folks at FierceHealthcare have compiled a list of the top ten health plan CEOs ranked by compensation. The links include details on performance, prior year compensation, and a bit of editorial.
Aetna Ron Williams $24,300,112
CIGNA Ed Hanway $12, 236,740
WellPoint Angela Braly $9,844,212
Coventry Dale Wolf (ret) $9,047,469
Centene Michael Neidorff $8,774,483
Amerigroup James Carlson $5,292,546
Humana Michael McCallister $4,764,309
HealthNet Jay Gellert $4,425,355
Universal American Richard Barasch $3,503,702
UnitedHealth Group Steve Hemsley $3,421,042
Some of these top-ten CEOs saw their compensation drop due to declines in their company stock price or other financial issues (CIGNA, Coventry) while others seem to have been unaffected by deteriorating performance (WellPoint, HealthNet) and settlement of lawsuits (Amerigroup.
May
21
Add these numbers up and divide by $2 trillion. CEO income may be too high, but it is a drop in the bucket.
Even insurer overhead generally doesn’t explain more than a small fraction of why our costs are so much higher than other developed nations.
It’s the 80/20 rule, but insurance is on the wrong side of it: we’re spending 80% of our time worrying about 20% of the problem (actually, less than 20%).
This is not an opinion. The numbers are clear, though I haven’t taken the time to assemble them here.
I suppose “jd” would only believe that these reimbursements were problematic if the CEO aggregate was a more substantial percentage of our total healthcare burden (a mere 14% of our GDP). Yeah, these guys aren’t part of the problem, they’re part of the solution.