July 31st, 2009
Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Top executives of the state’s largest health insurers earn millions of dollars in pay a year, but their compensation is comparable with executives in similar jobs, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department said in a report issued yesterday.
Independence Blue Cross chief executive officer Joseph A. Frick earned nearly $2.8 million in 2008. Kenneth R. Melani, chief executive of Pittsburgh’s Highmark Inc., earned nearly $3.6 million.
“Our report concludes that the compensation packages of Highmark and Independence Blue Cross are reasonable under the applicable legal standard,” Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario said in a statement.
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“We are pleased with the report’s conclusion,” said Independence Blue Cross spokeswoman Elizabeth Williams, a sentiment similarly expressed by Highmark.
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The Insurance Department report said the executives’ pay was in line with what executives of Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies earned nationally.
The two men’s pay also compared with compensation paid to chief executives at major nonprofit health systems, including the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
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Lance Haver, consumer-affairs director for the City of Philadelphia, criticized Ario’s logic.
“To look at obscene salaries of CEOs to justify obscene salaries of CEOs is not a realistic way to decide anything,” Haver said. “It’s almost like saying criminal behavior is not criminal because other criminals do it.
“This report is one of the greatest indicators for the need of health-care reform – a reform where consumers aren’t forced to pay literally millions of dollars to CEOs to provide a basic necessity of life.”
Ario said the legal standard was comparability, and that comparability drives competition for executive talent.
Read more at the Inquirer. And HealthPoint readers… this story just cries out for reader comments!
August 21st, 2009 at 12:39 am
Because you are stealing just as much as other criminals does not decriminalize the crime!!! Stop these bastards and if they want to make that kind of money let them go to a for profit job and fight for it, not likely they will make it there. We need single payer, watch Sicko from Michael Moore and see how Canadian, English and the French love their system, not anything like we have been told by the Health Insurance Corporations. Don’t just believe and drink their koolaide, check it out by speaking by citizens there, read their blogs and you will see that NONE of them want to ever go to a system like ours! How would you like to have a fire at your house and after the Corporate Run fire department comes and puts out the fire, they hand you a $200,000 bill? What if you called a cop and after they show up and take care of your problem the Corporate Run Police hand you a bill for $100,000 for their time? Why is Health Care different??? Only because the Insurance companies have lied and use scare tactics to manipulate all of those who are easily controlled by such tactics and who can’t think for themselves. Let your representatives know that we need a Single Payer system or as close as we can get now and we will move it further that way as soon as we can!!! Speak out against the Loud Obnoxious disruptive paid protesters and demand a good health care program~!!!