Health Insurance Company CEOs Total Compensation in 2008
photo by wardomatic via flickr
A few months back we posted the Total Compensation for a number of Health Insurance Company CEOs for 2007. Those numbers, culled from the companies’ SEC filings (Schedule 14A) appears immediately below. Below that are the numbers for 2008, courtesy of FierceHealthcare.com through Jan Rodolpho, RN.
As you can see, the year has brought decreases for some CEOs (but not all). One wonders, discretion being the better part of valor, if the clamor for health care reform and the pursuit of a Public Plan, has counseled caution –for the time being– regarding executive compensation. If the timing for further compensation has merely been adjusted so as to backload payments until after the health care reform debate is settled. Either way, the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. Perhaps a slight bit of context is in order, however: it has struck me that Aetna’s Ronald Williams received $24,300,112 last year. That’s $467,309.85 per week. That’s a house. Maybe not a house that Mr. Williams would live in, but a house nonetheless. The man makes a house a week. And interestingly enough, if Mr. Williams were to eschew the purchase of a house on any given week and instead look to deposit the money in a bank– in order to remain FDIC insured (up to $250,000)– he would actually need to open more than one account–every week. Lest we lament the fate of the other CEOs on the list, in 2008 Ms. Braly had to get by on $189,311.76 per week, and Mr. Hemsley had to somehow manage on $62,327.73 per week (but perhaps he was able to save a little from last year when he made $253,164.02 per week).
Res Ipsa Loquitur.
Ins. Co. & CEO With 2007 Total CEO Compensation
- Aetna Ronald A. Williams: $23,045,834
- Cigna H. Edward Hanway: $25,839,777
- Coventry Dale B. Wolf : $14,869,823
- Health Net Jay M. Gellert: $3,686,230
- Humana Michael McCallister: $10,312,557
- U.Health Grp Stephen J. Hemsley: $13,164,529
- WellPoint Angela Braly (2007): $9,094,271
L. Glasscock (2006): $23,886,169
Ins. Co. & CEO With 2008 Total CEO Compensation
- Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112
- Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740
- Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469
- Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355
- Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309
- U. Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042
- Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212
See Nonprofit Health Related CEO Compensation Here.
Update: “Why WellPoint’s Angela Braly Deserves A Raise”
CEO compensation in the health care insurance industry is outrageous. Can anyone explain to me, or to the public at large, how such large compensation packages improve health care access for the ordinary citizen. How may people could get insurance if the CEO’s would limit their compensation to 40 times the lowest paid employer in their companies?
I’m not surprised.
With all this money working against health care for all Americans, there’s little hope that change will happen.
Everything is fine with our current system - as long as you don’t get sick.
The truly disturbing part to all this - this is another obvious example of how our government is NOT working for the people - but working for corporations and the fat cats. This isn’t sustainable - sooner or later the middle class and lower class will be so large and so stressed that they’ll have no choice but to over throw our democracy. We’re shooting our democracy in the foot.
Family Practice Physicians make less per year than the Aetna CEO makes in a week! That is complete egregious! On top of these ridiculously high salaries, the health plans are posting profits every quarter. Why are employers and patients paying higher premiums for less coverage? Why are physician reimbursements rates being lowered or at the very least remaining flat? The only entity getting by in health care are the insurance companies!
I lived and worked in Germany for several years and the only complaints I ever heard about their national health care, was that many took advantage of stays at cure centers (spas) when they were not really sick at taxpayer expense. No complaints on quality of care etc. It is financed by a national sales tax. We simply must get rid of this for profit motive in health care or costs will continue to rise to the point that only the super wealthy will be able to have care. My wife recently had knee replacement , the hospital bill alone was $ 72,000 , this in a local economy where a fairly good job pays $10 per hour - taxes
The only way to change this situation is to Nationalize thes companies alltogether, confiscate all the money and infuse the funds into centralized healthcare funds governed by the state. Otherwise this will continue to get out of hand and no one, again, no one, would be able to do anything. We, the people, should have the final say, isn’t that so?…
If we completely removed the about $66 million in CEO compensation from the insurance industry, we would be able to cover about one tenth of a percent of the $56 billion the uninsured spent on medical coverage in 2008. In other words, about 1 in 1000 uninsured could be covered if health insurance CEO’s got nothing. Clearly, then, insurance industry compensation is neither the main cause of nor solution to insuring all americans. Yet people love to get outraged.
Without delving deeply into the ratio of Health Insurer Total Compensation to health care costs attributable to the uninsured (though I’m not entirely sure you can substitute the amount paid by the uninsured for health services (much much higher than the insured; See http://www.healthreformwatch.com/2009/07/19/price-gouging-by-doctors-and-hospitals/ by Professors Hall & Schneider) for what it would cost for insurance–public or private, I think you’ve missed the point. It’s true this article has been reprinted (or “re-posted” is perhaps more apt) all over the web–but I don’t think it’s because “people love to be outraged.” I think it’s simply because people are outraged. $467,000 per week is a tremendous amount of money. The poverty level for a family of three in this country is $18,310 PER YEAR. http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml Assuming a 7 day work week, Mr. Williams makes roughly $67,000 per day. And Aetna cries poverty and wants us all to believe that if a far more affordable Public Option is implemented, it will impact their profitability which will ultimately impact private insurance availability which will ultimately impact you and me. And I don’t think I care about protecting Aetna’s– or Mr. Williams’ profits/salary. Having said that, I think the level of compensation serves well to clarify some of the systemic problems with health insurance as presently constituted– and is, in a very real sense, symptomatic of a sick system. In the post, I prefaced the numbers with the Latin phrase “Res Ipsa Loquitur.” It’s a legal phrase which means “the thing speaks for itself.” I think those numbers do.
Thanks for the article on price-gouging by hospitals, interesting stuff that I was not aware of.
But the problem is the numbers don’t speak for themselves with how they are characterized in the health care debate. A tremendous amount of health care coverage talks about what we pay for health insurance and what the insurance companies profits are, or what their CEO compensation is; there is almost no discussion of what the services actually cost. Continually mentioning the first two seems to indicate that they are most strongly correlated, when in reality the actual cost (ie for doctors, treatments, drugs, etc) and sheer number of medical treatments now available is by far the main driver behind increasing medical costs. Even if the price-gouging article’s worst case scenario of quadrupled costs for the uninsured is used across the board, eliminating CEO compensation all together would be a whopping half a percent towards the actual cost of insuring the uninsured. This is a negligible amount; yet casting the discussion as one between costs and insurance profits make it seem like profits are the main cause for rising health care costs. Hence, the outrage.
That’s the main problem; CEO compensation is a large number in an absolute sense but a very small one relative to health care costs. I understand the emotional response to seeing such large numbers, but in practice they provide almost none of the difficulty or solution to medical costs. I don’t care about actually protecting Aetna’s or William’s profits either, but I think government restricting compensation based not on actual economic reality or policy but instead on public whim or emotional dislike is pretty dangerous and intrusive.
You mention the benefit that the Public Option would be far more affordable, but in this article focus only on the burden of the Public Option on insurance companies, which is easy to get support for but represents a very small piece of the Public Option’s increased affordability. That relies almost entirely on subsidization, both by taxpayers and on payment for services and treatments rendered by the medical community. The relative benefits and burdens of this subsidization is for another debate, but the numbers tell us it is the one we really should be having, and I find much of the support for the public option to be misguided by the perceived tremendous impact of insurance company profits and compensation.
Ceo and top executives pay and compensation is CRAZY !.. just abusrd…this is just an idication of how SICK our health care system is in America… WE NEED REFORM !
American’s pay such a big % of their income toward health care, that they
almost cannot afford anything else… No wonder the economy is shattered. A huge %
goes toward health care, and often even that does not cover all ailments… and these
CEO’s and top executives are making out like bandits…. This is not sustainable for the
MAJORITY of American’s… It is bound to collapse…. REFORM now and limit compensation and offer a public health care system as instituted in European nations for years now..!!!!!!
@Jason (saw his post after finishing mine)
Adding up the figures given and figuring $12000 per year for a family and no compensation for the CEOs, about 5700 families, a far cry from the estimate 44 million without insurance.
If the market knows this information, I wonder why more people aren’t going to non-profits or companies that have lower compensation packages? How about investors? Why don’t progressive investors take their money elsewhere? Wouldn’t this be a better solution than the federal government taking on another burden that they are ill prepared to take on (can you say “Cash for Clunkers”?).
Real reform starts at the state level where taxpayers can make sure they get value if they decide their state government should take on this role.
BTW, Ben & Jerry’s tried the CEO can’t more than x times the lowest paid worker. It was short lived. I agree with the sentiment but caps on pay doesn’t work. Does it work for you?
The only way to reform the health care system is to take the insurance companies out of the picture. They are just crooks stealing the money.
If the government looked into them all the CEO’s of the insurance companies would have to be arrested and thrown in jail for insyrance fraud just like Madoff was thrown in jail.
We basically have the crooks running both the government and the insurance companies.
I am amazed each time I see the salaries of insurance companies of CEOs poste. I mean it’s really outrageous.
I also just learned that JK Rowling is the first author in the history of the world to amass wealth of over $1 billion from her creative work. That’s just crazy, isn’t it? I mean a room full of monkeys with typewriters could eventually come up with a Harry Potter for far less than $1 billion, right?
When can we get around to fixing JK Rowling’s salary, because clearly that should be a target for us, too, given that we’re all so obviously qualified to gauge the value of any person’s contribution.
We’re certainly better qualified than any MARKET to make this determination, and we probably ought to set up a government office to do it. We are pointedly more intelligent about setting reasonable prices for leadership and creativity than any MARKET.
I think that insane JK Rowling should be next. $1 billion is just too much for society to pay for a few dimestore novels.
Either that, or we could just expect government to write a few more books for summer reading.
So what might the titles of those government written books for summer reading be? (he said supplying the straight line).
It is interesting that Rowland was chosen as an example of somebody that was possibly overcompensated for her contibutions to society. Rowland can truthfully claim that her compensation was truly based on the open marketplace. People everywhere decided whether they wanted to buy the book, buy the movie, attend the movie or buy any of the copious Harry Potter merchandise that is available.
Compare this to Health Insurance executive compensation that is not based on how much healthcare the company provides to satisfied policy holders but is directly related to how much health care is denied to policy holders. Remember health insurers provide no health care. They are pure overhead.
Another example is professional sports salaries. These salaries were determined by an overpowering union that would think nothing of shutting down a sport for an entire season if all of their demands are not met. I wouldn’t care if these salaries were paid for out of fans happily paying to attend games, watching on pay per view television, and buying team merchandise. Unfortunately these salaries are paid for by cities having to provide state of the art stadiums, parking, and road and rail access at taxpayer expense. Cable television customers must pay for professional sports even if they have no interest in watching these events. This constitues an involuntary sports tax on cable bills.
Blah Blah Blah… oh the perils of capitalism. I’m sure you are not a complete moron (I ASSume) and you realize a large portion of CEO income is based on stock options, etc which can fluctuate. With the poor stock performance of 2008, you can see why many of the salaries were lower this year. Maybe a better comparison would be the base salaries of each CEO but then that wouldn’t be as sensational, would it? Perhaps you could post the salaries of some of the CEOs from big pharma OR the salaries of some hospital CEOs… or instead of drooling over the salaries of people who work hard for a living, you could go out and get a job with the hope that someday you might earn a salary that cannot be capped.
We are being held hostage by the insurance companies of America and the politicians refuse to do anything about it because they are getting a piece of the pie! So now we know where the “killing fields” really are, or the “Death Panels” Sarah Palin so freely talks about, obviously she is a part of this ugly picture as well! Isn’t it strange what greed with do to mankind? Now we see the same thing going on in the insurance companies just as they did in the housing and financial markets not very long ago!
Aw, Some of the poor dears had to take a pay cut for 2008. Tis a pity.
It’s Time to take back our 99% of this country from the 1% that’s running it into hell…..
I agree that CEO compensation is outrageous, but the way to combat that is to buy a whole bunch of stock in those companies, and to vote to reduce the CEOs’ compensation. I would not object too greatly to adding another tax bracket for the ultra-rich, but to have the government limit salaries of citizens is socialism.
Before posting proposals to fix the “broken healthcare system” by confiscating the profits or CEO pay of the health insurance companies, you should all have looked how the profits and CEO compensation relate to the total amount of insurance claims paid out.
If you look at http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/pushing-for-a-public-plan/, you will see that in 2007, the total compensation for health insurance CEO’s was $119 million and the total profit was $13 billion. That is indeed a lot of money, but consider that the health insurance companies paid out $2.2 trillion in 2007, so that profits only made up only 0.6% of the total payout and CEO compensation was only 0.005%!
Several of the bills in Congress now, propose to pay for the 47 million uninsured with “cost savings” and eliminating “waste and fraud.” Since when has the government been good at any of those? Other than police and firefighters, name anything that the government does better than private companies? Building management? You mean like public housing? Post office? FEMA? DMV? Are public schools better than private schools?
Also, there’s a ton of money in these bills for stuff that’s got nothing to do with fixing the healthcare system. There’s $10 billion in HR3200 to bail out the failing union pension plans. Is that where you want your tax dollars going?
The bottom line is that there’s nothing in any of the bills before Congress now that will improve healthcare, decrease costs, or guarantee anything except more government involvement in citizens’ lives. Why no malpractice lawsuit reform? (Well, maybe it’s because trial law firms are 10 of the top 20 contributors to both Democrats and Republicans, also because 90% of Congress are lawyers. By the way, malpractice lawsuit reform has been passed in Texas and has already proven to reduce costs to the consumers. Why not lift the federal restriction on purchasing insurance across state lines? That would increase competition and lower costs. There’s nothing in any of the bills regarding that.
We need to focus our efforts on fixing the problems that need fixing. I’ll kick in $100 per year to give free healthcare to the 15 million or so people who don’t have it because they can’t afford it. The rest of the 32 million uninsured are either illegal aliens or simply CHOOSE to not get insurance. Meanwhile, Congress should work on that medical malpractice lawsuit reform and on lifting the interstate insurance purchase ban.
The payment to CEO s may be very big and but it is a tiny fraction of 0.005% is miniscule of the total reveues and the big profit made for the company. Let the one who is outraged by the big pay willing to work for that insurance company to create same profit? Lot of us feel jealous of others achievement while most of the complainers do not posses the business savy talents. The rest of the world where they earn one dollar a day question why american worker earn at least 100 dollars a day? For every person he is the zero point and any one makes a lot is dismissed as greedy with out taking into consideraion all the relevant facts. The human brain about two percent of human body receives 10% of blood supply and major part of glucose becase it runs the body lika CEO and without fine work by brain we are dead. If CEOs are not paid at all 119 millon dollars will it solve the health care crisis or will it kill the health care industry brain dead. The communist world revolutinary leaders come into power using class war by rebellion to become themselves billionaires and people loose freedom even to complain. If the share holders of the private insurance companies have no objection to pay their profit making CEO, who are we and Obama to object? When world complains US 5% of world population consumes 25% of world resources we defend ourselves by the hard work and technology based profit. A similar argument holds good for CEO or any professinal or sportsman who earns a lot by his talent in a market driven by demand/supply and profit. If there is no gradient water or wind does not flow to generate useful energy, the life wiil be flat desert and all will be equally poor.
Stealth Care: You might think it’s Health Care, But You can’t find it.
Montana Senator Max Baucus reveled his health care reform proposal and is already drawing fire from both sides of the aisle. The plan has no government run health care option, it requires individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine ($3,800), prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, prohibits insurance companies from imposing caps on payouts, provides tax credits to help low- and middle-income families purchase insurance, and creates a Web-based insurance exchange making purchasing insurance and comparing plans. The price tag is estimated to be $856 billion over 10 years and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the plan to cost $774 billion over 10 years and a savings of $49 billion to the deficit over ten years.
The plan does not include a “public option” and the plan would be paid for by $507 billion in reductions to existing government health programs and $349 billion in new taxes and fees. The White House being desperate for some sort of health care reform package, Blue Dog Democrats, and moderate Republicans seem to support the plan as a compromise. However, it doesn’t take much investigating to see why Senator Baucus may have capitulated to the Health Care Industry. When reviewing where the Senator gets his donations, Senator Max Baucus has received almost $2 million from the Health Care Industry.
So what are the issues with the Baucus Plan:
•No Public Option-The Baucus Plan has no public option and instead proposes $6 billion in start-up funds to non-profit health insurance cooperatives. Progressive Senators Jay Rockefeller, Russ Feingold, and Roland Burris have stated their disapproval with the Baucus Plan not including a “public option” and that the idea of health care cooperatives being an untested and unproven solution. Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, states she supports a bill with the “public option” and would put forward such a plan in the House.
•New Taxes on Insurance Companies-The Baucus Plan implements a new tax on “high-value insurance plans”, those worth $21,000 for a family and $8,000 for an individual. This new tax is feared to attack the middle class, union workers who have fought hard for generous health plans, and would hurt American workers who have coverage. Some Democrats want to capture only the super-expensive plans of the wealthy, rather than a tax on the middle class insurance plans.
•Free Rider Provision-The Baucus Plan implements a “free rider” provision that is meant to ensure that employers don’t forgo their responsibility to help employees purchase health insurance. This accomplished by imposing a tax on employers to assist employees, to purchase insurance, who qualify for federal insurance subsidies. The problem with the “free rider” provision is that employers may discourage employers without health insurance coverage from hiring employees who are low to moderate income.
So what is wrong with Senator Baucus’ proposal? To begin, it did not reach the objectives of President Obama’s reforms and may cost millions of Americans more for their health care. Under the Baucus proposal, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden states, “a family earning three times the poverty level — $66,150 for a family of four — would have to pay up to 13 percent of their income for health insurance.” This is clearly outside of the objectives of the President, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate Majority Leader.
So we waited 3 months to get a proposal that will not help everyday Americans get the coverage and health care the so deserve and need. It is also clear that Senator Baucus capitulated to the Health Care Industry and truly did a disservice to the American people.
You guys are hypocrites. It’s ok for an actor/actress to make $20 million on one film that takes 3 months to make or an athlete getting 10 million a year for playing sports half a year. However, when you have someone that oversees thousands of employees a day God forbid they make millions. Lawyers make millions a year also, everyone wants health reform to bring cost down, however lawyers can still sue the doctors for millions. This is a joke. Anyone can become an athlete or actor, that why many of them do not have college degrees, but not everyone can perform surgery on someone, create a life saving drug, or run a large corporation. Of course the actors speak out now that they want health reform, they already made their millions.
The money these people (insurance co. CEOs) take is outrageous, unethical, immoral, and (directed to the self-righteous, religious far right republicans) unChristian. Having studied “Risk and Insurance,” the basic principle of insurance is to spread the risk among the INSURED, — not to make a handful of greedy SOB’s despicably rich! Granted someone has to manage the ‘group,’ but these CEO’s don’t manage anything. They just dictate ‘policy’ designed to line their wallets. In fact I’d really like to know what these people actually do! I’m convinced that if they died overnight, the company would go on just fine without them. How do they justify such inequitable compensation???
Amazing they make so much! I read an article where their industry only profited 2.2 % last year wonder what it would have been if everyone making over 250K a year had their salaries cut in half?
I see you are all worked up over the CEO of Aetna earning a house a week in pay. However, I noticed that you conviently left out of the article how much of that “house a week” was in actual cash compensation. It is certainly not a “house a week,” now is ti.
Want to know the difference between an actor making an obscene amount of money and a health insurance CEO making an obscene amount of money? A CEO’s compensation is based on company profits, and the more reasons a health insurance company finds to deny coverage the more profitable it is. So there is a direct link between CEO salaries and company profits, and there is a direct link between company profits and an increase in death and suffering in the customer base.
I do agree the high CEO compensation contributes very little to overall health care cost, so in that sense that issue and tort reform are really red herrings. But how much money is spent on lobbyist and campaign contributions? How much is spent on attack ads? How much more is spent on administrative cost compare to other government programs like the VA and Medicare? When you add up all the expenses a government option wouldn’t have, plus the goal of sustainability instead of maximum profits, the public option makes a lot of sense.
When will people start getting upset about celebrity pay? The top 70 celebrities on forbes top 100 list all make more than the number 1 CEO on this list? Here are the top 6 at over $100 million a year:
Oprah Winfrey $275 million
George Lucas $170 million
Steven Spielberg $150 million
Madonna $110 million… Read More
Tiger Woods 110 million
Jerry Bruckheimer $100 million
So it is ok that Oprah makes about $750k a day but not ok that Ronald A. Williams makes $67k a week.
When will we see the outrage over celebrity pay? When will the federal government come in and limit celebrity compensation? Oh wait they all contribute to the Democrats so we won’t will we.
Mike,
Thank you, you cleared it up perfectly. I love how these democrats want to pick and chose who makes millions.
It’s easy to react emotionally when you see these obscene paychecks. But hold on a minute. Let’s throw away the emotion and analyze the situation logically. Take the CEO of Aetna. He made over 24 million dollars. According to Wikipedia, Aenta has about 17.5 million covered lives. Therefore, the CEO got about $1.30 from each covered life. That means, if he worked for free (which none of us do!) a family of four would save $5.20 on premiums YEARLY! Honestly, would that make any difference? We should talk about the real issues, not executive pay.
Once again people don’t seem to understand, the fact Oprah is super rich has NOTHING to do with my health! Or that Tiger is a billionaire for hitting a ball around the country side. But the compensation that Ron Williams gets is DIRECTLY involved with people’s health, because he is more interested in protecting his investors, the stock holders, than he is in protecting the poor patients who had the misfortune to have Aetna as their insurance company. He gets rewarded by the company profit bottom line, and the less “payout” to patients, the better for him! His company regularly goes thru patients folders to see who they can deny next—happened to me, Aetna decided, WITHOUT consulting my doctor, that I was no longer sick, and just dumped me from coverage…snap, just like that. Their own doctor disagreed with them when I had to see him! I lost my house, car, and sense of any well-being I had at the time. And there is no recourse, the ERISA law, enacted by congress in the 1990’s I believe, says you can’t sue Aetna or the other insurance companies for pain/suffering etc they might have caused you by denying you coverage in the middle of an illness. And, newsflash, for whatever the Democrats in the House are saying and the high fives they are giving themselves about ‘regulating the insurance companies” they have NOT repealed that ERISA law in this new “health care coverage” package! You still don’t have the right to sue them!
So you see, what Oprah or Tiger or J K Rowling makes is not important to a person’s health, are they overpaid, totally, but it is people like Ron Williams who suck the blood out of people who trusted they were covered and paid their premiums on time every month only to have some desk clerk trying to win a free lunch in a “see who can eliminate the most patients” contest! Stick around, it will happen to you too!
Vicki,
Obviously you’re missing the point. Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and every other singer, athlete, etc. are making millions or billions at the expense of Americans. Maybe that person does not have health insurance because they bought $500.00 a piece football tickets or went to a concert for $100.00 a pop. Many Americans cannot afford health insurance, but why? Is it b/c they truly cannot afford it or would they rather spend their money on luxurious items. Too many Americans live WAY BEYOND THEIR MEANS. $100 Cell phone plan, movie tickets, plasma tvs., blues ray DVDs (what a joke at $30.00 each), expensive clothes, expensive cars, CIGARETTES, too expensive of a home, expensive cable plans, internet, the list goes on. There are so many things we buy in everyday life that are jacked up in price because we pay these idiots to do ads on them. So by you saying their pay as nothing to do with your health, is ridiculous. I love how people complain about the price of their prescription drugs or health insurance, but it’s that same person that will buy a $50,000 car.
Vicki,
Also these companies(insurance and drug) are publicly traded companies owned by stock owners. So for anyone to think these companies should not make a profit, while all other industries do is absurd. Why would anyone buy stock in these companies if they cannot make the profits other companies do and cannot hire some of the best CEOs. So xyz insurance should hire a sh*t CEO for $500K a year, McDonalds can pay their CEO millions and hire one of the best. You think health care is a right well what about FOOD! Come on wake up, what your saying would be nice in a perfect world, but we are far from it.
Consfication of insurance of insurance companies by the government is a bad Ultimately the effect on the for-profit companies, would be (1), for those companies to idea. Insurance companies must be beat by what is called in their own jargon, “free Enterprise”. Presently, wood-be insurance subscribers have little choice., for a lack of alternative, but to pay exhorbitant premiums. The Federal Government must give buyers of insurance the choice they can afford and the care that they need. The Federal Government must set up a federal inshurance compeny of the citizens own. All workers paid according to the government list. will make for a less-expensive operation along with subsubdies, the government insurance premiums would be less costly than those of commercial companies. A Federal Health Insurance Company could compete with the for-profit companies and would attract customers because of its less costly premiums. For-profit insurance companies would be obligated to, (1), reduce imbursements, this would cause customer dissatisfaction, (2), to minimize running-costs by reducing staff ; this would cause ex-employee dissatisfaction and would help erode the reputation of the insurance companies and, (3), cost-cutting measures would, ultimately, affect the management; but that would occur, only after suffering had been spread through the lower ranks of the company.
The benefits of a well-run federal insurance company are obvious; but those benefits are not obvious to many voters. Why? Many citizens feel disconnected from their government. They do not see the government as theirs, that is to say, the government workers as their employees, whom the citizens may fire at the next election. Presently, there is too much of the case of “we” (the citizens) and “they” (the government); each looking after his own interests. A government-run insurance company in a democracy is the citizens’ company. If a majority of the citizens perceives that there is an individual who is not running the company for the general well-being, those citizens may exercise their right as an actual members of the board; they may fire the miscreant by voting him out of government. Who has the wealth or power to change the make-up of any of the for-profit insurance companies? Very few. Those few are not looking after the welfare of the majority; they are looking after the welfare of their personal bank account.
It is difficult for citizens to be heard The organs of the public needs, the media, are much financially obligated to very large companies, among whom are the for-profit health insurance companies. Never underestimate the persuasiveness of the media: There are millions of girls who are now, suffering from anorexia nervosa for having seen images of the “ideal” female. There are now, millions of smokers who have been persuaded that pleasure is more important health and who are doomed to dieing of lung cancer. However, it is still possible to think and to act for the common good and for an individual’s own well-being, by voting for a goverment-run insurance company, your health insurance company, run by your government.
Know well and without equivocation, that: Health insurance companies function on the single axiom–Give us PROFIT, or we give you DEATH!
Do we have to accept that ultimatum?
–R.T. Thomes
We must Nationalize health care. This is the only way to stop this hemorrhage into the health insurance CEO’s pockets. Health care does NOT belong in a capitalist market. A true capitalist market dictates that if you have money, you get the goods/service. We can never morally live with ourselves to allow people to die in our ER’s if they don’t have insurance. We are already paying for this now and it is costing us greatly. The money is out there American’s. It just need to be cost shifted to the right place.
I don’t think we should just take away their pay, we should take away their ability to steal this much money from the unprotected public.
These people are in a class all their own. They are Nobles in a Kingdom created by the pure capitalistic environment they live in. Profits, profits, profits, are the reason we must have a Medicare type health care system. Tommy Douglas used to say, “It’s simple Math”. He started the health care system in Canada. He died in 1986 but he was elected the Greatest Canadian in 2004. Why was he elected the Greatest Canadian? Because he gave Canada their greatest gift. And even though there are some problems lately, because he isn’t here to fix them, they still like it better than profits for insurance CEO s.