CEO Compensation: Who Said Health Care is in a Financial Crisis?

Those of you who are struggling to pay for your generic medicines or wondering why the doctor is charging you a $5.00 co-pay, give some thought to these facts about how our health care dollars are allocated. At the end of this post, there is a list of 23 health companies I found on Forbes.com, what the CEO was paid in 2005, and the average paid to the CEO in the past five years.Imagine adding vice presidents, Board of Directors, stock holders and the other 200-300 other companies all cashing in on your health to that total at the bottom.Based on this, the next time you want to argue with your Primary Care doctor’s front desk about a $5.00 co-pay, remember that he makes an average of $149,000.00 per year. On the other hand — using United Healthcare as an example — your insurance company paid their CEO — one man — $324,000,000 over a recent five year period.If you are uninsured, try calling any one of these 23 CEOs and see if they will give you free insurance.BTW: 10% of 14.9 billion is 1.4 billion. If basic insurance costs $8,000/year for a family then taking 10% from just these CEO salaries would insure 35,000 Americans a year for five years. That is a lot of people that can be helped just by 23 men. Looking at the companies as a whole that profit from health care, we can probably pay for every uninsured person in this country for decades to come.The numbers are numbing, which is why we should do something about this.United Health GroupCEO: William W McGuire2005: 124.8 mil5-year: 342 milForest LabsCEO: Howard Solomon2005: 92.1 mil5-year: 295 milCaremark RxCEO: Edwin M Crawford2005: 77.9 mil5-year: 93.6 milAbbott LabCEO: Miles White2005: 26.2 mil5-year: 25.8 milAetnaCEO: John Rowe2005: 22.1 mil5-year:57.8 milAmgenCEO: Kevin Sharer2005:5.7 mil5-year:59.5 milBectin-DickinsonCEO: Edwin Ludwig2005: 10 mil5-year:18 milBoston ScientificCEO:2005:38.1 mil5-year:45 milCardinal HealthCEO: James Tobin2005:1.1 mil5-year:33.5 milCignaCEO: H. Edward Hanway2005:13.3 mil5-year:62.8 milGenzymeCEO: Henri Termeer2005: 19 mil5-year:60.7 milHumanaCEO: Michael McAllister2005:2.3 mil5-year:12.9 milJohnson & JohnsonCEO: William Weldon2005:6.1 mil5-year:19.7 milLaboratory Corp AmericaCEO: Thomas MacMahon2005:7.9 mil5-year:41.8 milEli LillyCEO: Sidney Taurel2005:7.2 mil5-year:37.9 milMcKessonCEO: John Hammergen2005: 13.4 mil5-year:31.2 milMedtronicCEO: Arthur Collins2005: 4.7 mil5-year:39 milMerck Raymond GilmartinCEO:2005: 37.8 mil5-year:49.6 milPacifiCare HealthCEO: Howard Phanstiel2005: 3.4 mil5-year: 8.5 milPfizerCEO: Henry McKinnell2005: 14 mil5-year: 74 milWell ChoiceCEO: Michael Stocker2005: 3.2 mil5-year: 10.7 milWellPointCEO: Larry Glasscock2005: 23 mil5-year: 46.8 milWyethCEO: Robert Essner2005:6.5 mil5-year: 28.9 milTOTAL 2005: 559.8 milTOTAL 5-Year: 14.9 billionRelated Topics: Group Pushes Universal Health CareIs Health Insurance a Right?Technorati Tags: health care, health care reform, CEO compensation, health insurance The opinions expressed in the WebMD Blogs are of the author and the author alone. WebMD does not endorse any specific product, service, treatment or political point of view.