It started with an article by Wendell Potter bemoaning extravagant and increasing CEO compensation packages. Rising to Wendell's challenge Chris Conover over at Forbes wrote an article sharing one of those epiphanies. He takes CEO pay and divides it by all employees, presto, see there CEOs aren't milking anyone. It's a great fantasy argument and I'm sure his math holds. But, ...
Conover deftly skips over the reason for the outrage at health insurance company executives with his little math trick. First Mr. Potter:
Skyrocketing Salaries for Health Insurance CEOs
By Wendell Potter, Center for Public Integrity | Commentary | June 10, 2014
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24280-skyrocketing-salaries-for-health-insurance-ceos
If health insurance companies announce big premium increases on policies for 2015, I hope regulators, lawmakers and the media will look closely at whether they are justified, especially in light of recent disclosures of better-than-expected profits in 2013, rosy outlooks for the rest of this year and soaring CEO compensation.
Almost all of the publicly traded health insurers reported big increases in revenue and profits last year. The big winners have been the top executives of those companies, led by Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, the nation’s third largest health insurer. Bertolini’s total compensation of $30.7 million in 2013 was 131 percent higher than in 2012. … {read on}
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Mr. Conover's retort at Forbes:
What If We Confiscated CEO Compensation For Large Health Insurers And Redistributed It To Members?
Chris Conover | March 31, 2016