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 Group
CEO: William W McGuire
2005: 124.8 mil
5-year: 342 mil
- Forest Labs
CEO: Howard Solomon
2005: 92.1 mil
5-year: 295 mil
- Caremark Rx
CEO: Edwin M Crawford
2005: 77.9 mil
5-year: 93.6 mil
- Abbott Lab
CEO: Miles White
2005: 26.2 mil
5-year: 25.8 mil
- Aetna
CEO: John Rowe
2005: 22.1 mil
5-year:57.8 mil
- Amgen
CEO: Kevin Sharer
2005:5.7 mil
5-year:59.5 mil
- Bectin-Dickinson
CEO: Edwin Ludwig
2005: 10 mil
5-year:18 mil
- Boston Scientific
CEO:
2005:38.1 mil
5-year:45 mil
- Cardinal Health
CEO: James Tobin
2005:1.1 mil
5-year:33.5 mil
- Cigna
CEO: H. Edward Hanway
2005:13.3 mil
5-year:62.8 mil
- Genzyme
CEO: Henri Termeer
2005: 19 mil
5-year:60.7 mil
- Humana
CEO: Michael McAllister
2005:2.3 mil
5-year:12.9 mil
- Johnson & Johnson
CEO: William Weldon
2005:6.1 mil
5-year:19.7 mil
- Laboratory Corp America
CEO: Thomas MacMahon
2005:7.9 mil
5-year:41.8 mil
- Eli Lilly
CEO: Sidney Taurel
2005:7.2 mil
5-year:37.9 mil
- McKesson
CEO: John Hammergen
2005: 13.4 mil
5-year:31.2 mil
- Medtronic
CEO: Arthur Collins
2005: 4.7 mil
5-year:39 mil
- Merck Raymond Gilmartin
CEO:
2005: 37.8 mil
5-year:49.6 mil
- PacifiCare Health
CEO: Howard Phanstiel
2005: 3.4 mil
5-year: 8.5 mil
- Pfizer
CEO: Henry McKinnell
2005: 14 mil
5-year: 74 mil
- Well Choice
CEO: Michael Stocker
2005: 3.2 mil
5-year: 10.7 mil
- WellPoint
CEO: Larry Glasscock
2005: 23 mil
5-year: 46.8 mil
- Wyeth
CEO: Robert Essner
2005:6.5 mil
5-year: 28.9 mil
TOTAL 2005: 559.8 mil
TOTAL 5-Year: 14.9 billionRelated Topics: 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.
