You know all those health industry lobbyists who say that the American healthcare industry will go broke if it has to take care of the health of Americans?
Every year since 2011 — when ACA became law — the CEOs of US health companies have averaged an 11% raise. Remember, that’s 11 percent, every year.
Topping the list is John Martin who helmed Gilead Sciences to the tune of $863M since Obamacare’s passage.
American health care is indeed dangerous and unstably expensive, and to fix that, America’s health CEOs should be focusing on lower prices, eliminating unnecessary expenses, and coordinating care. Instead, America’s health care industry is booming at the expense of American health, thanks to a focus on selling more drugs, performing more procedures and tests, raising prices and engaging in gimmicky stock-inflating tactics.
*
Pharmaceutical and drug-related company CEOs made up 11 of the top 20 highest earners.*
Gilead’s Martin made the most since the ACA became law. Several other executives — including John Hammergren of McKesson ($587 million), Leonard Schleifer of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals ($338 million) and Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group ($279 million) — each took home more than a quarter-billion dollars on their own.*
A handful of lesser-known health care CEOs were among the highest earners. For example, Michael Mussallem of the medical device company Edwards Lifesciences collected $246 million since the ACA went into effect. Last year, for every dollar Mussallem’s company brought in as revenue, two cents went toward his pay.*
The analysis still underestimates how much wealth health care CEOs have. It did not include vested stock after CEOs retired, nor did it include the value of stock CEOs still hold. For example, Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina owns more than 13% of Walgreens, which equaled about $12 billion as of June 2017.
The sky-high pay of health care CEOs [Bob Herman/Axios]
(via Naked Capitalism)
(Image: Jeffrey Beall, CC-BY)
