Greedy Trial Lawyer
1.6 Billion Reasons To Go To A Single Payer Health Care System
Category: Gaming The System
Even the Wall Street Journal is having trouble swallowing the $1.6 Billion that is basically waiting to be plucked by the CEO of UnitedHealth Group Inc. while the squeeze is on both insured and uninsured Americans for health care.
If I exercised every stock option in my portfolio I would lose money. And, I am a greedy trial lawyer - go figure!
As Patients, Doctors Feel Pinch, Insurer's CEO Makes a BillionWhen William McGuire switched careers in 1986, he was so restless that a pay cut of more than 30% didn't faze him. Health maintenance organizations were booming, and Dr. McGuire wanted to help run one. So he jettisoned a six-figure income as a pulmonologist in favor of an HMO management job that paid about $70,000 a year.
Savvy move. Today, the 58-year-old Dr. McGuire is chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group Inc., one of the nation's largest health-care companies. He draws $8 million a year in salary plus bonus, enjoying perks such as personal use of the company jet. He also has amassed one of the largest stock-options fortunes of all time.
Unrealized gains on Dr. McGuire's options totaled $1.6 billion, according to UnitedHealth's proxy statement released this month. Even celebrated CEOs such as General Electric Co.'s Jack Welch or International Business Machines Corp.'s Louis Gerstner never were granted so much during their time at the top.
Dr. McGuire's story shows how an elite group of companies is getting rich from the nation's fraying health-care system. Many of them aren't discovering drugs or treating patients. They're middlemen who process the paperwork, fill the pill bottles and otherwise connect the pieces of a $2 trillion industry.
The middlemen credit themselves with keeping the health system humming and restraining costs. They're bringing in robust profits -- and their executives are among the country's most richly paid -- as doctors, patients, hospitals and even drug makers are feeling a financial squeeze. Some 46 million Americans lack health insurance.
Is it past time for a single payer health care system? Read more about this option that would at least save $1.6 Billion in one executive's compensation.
Our pluralistic health care system is giving way to a system run by corporate oligopolies. A single payer reform provides the only realistic alternative.
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