You want to know why we aren't getting serious change in the health care industry?

[Initech]

Hint: It's not the doctor salaries.



Source: http://www.ilhealthagents.com/blog/tag/health-insurance-company-ceo-salaries-2011/

Their greed knows no boundaries.

[defacto7]

1. Those compensatory amounts

are just so unnecessary... to say the least. I'll leave saying the most to the imagination.

[elehhhhna]

13. 77MILLION off the top each year for this handful of geniuses.

[defacto7]

15. Yep....

although the definition of genius is very subjective. It doesn't take a genius to be an opportunist in the right place/right time or be ruthless, nor does it take a genius to be concerned for the planet the human race, nor does it take a genius to know the difference between being self-serving or serving humankind. I don't know these people so I can't make a judgment as to whether they are any of those things or whether they are geniuses but I can say that by the looks of it, my opinion, they are too stupid to know or maybe care that what they are taking for compensation is unreasonable and cruel in the light of the plight of their clients struggle for life and health.

(Reading through my comment, it sounds a little pointed but it's just a comment. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. The word genius just seemed to bring up a good rant. Thanks)

[solarhydrocan]

2. Right! k/r

and this too

Pharmageddon by David Healy

Healy...attributes our current state of affairs to three key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials.

These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.
http://www.amazon.com/Pharmageddon-David-Healy/dp/0520275764/

Pharma + Insurance weasels= a busted system that will only get more expensive

[jeff47]

5. Uhhhhh......

these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

So....the guy not familiar with obscure places like "Canada"? Or "Europe"? Or that universal health care is more than just a possibility?

[solarhydrocan]

8. figure it out for yourself

David Healy, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the UK, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist, and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac, and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder.

Healy has been involved as an legal expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs, and has brought concerns about some medications to the attention of drug regulators. He has also raised awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders. His most recent book, Pharmageddon, documents how pharmaceutical companies have dominated healthcare in America, often with life-threatening results for patients. Healy is a founder and chief executive officer of Data Based Medicine Limited, which aims to make medicines safer through "online direct patient reporting of drug effects".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy -- click the psychiatrist as DU software doesn't deal with ( )

[jeff47]

16. A lengthy biography does not suddenly make an obviously false statement true. (nt)

[Phlem]

3. Spot on!

-p

[Laelth]

4. That's not the real problem, imo.

Nor is it the amount we pay doctors.

The most serious problem is that hospital company executives, health insurance executives, and pharmaceutical executives must, and I mean must, show profit increases every single quarter or they risk losing their jobs. Because the incentive to increase profits is so immense, these executives will do just about anything to accomplish that goal including, but not limited to, buying Congress, buying regulatory agencies, crushing labor, filing fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims, fighting against workers' compensation claims from injured workers, bullying suppliers, and just, generally, ripping off the very people their businesses allegedly serve.

CEO pay is but a drop in a huge bucket. Makes a great outrage generator, but it's not really the problem.

imo.

-Laelth

[solarhydrocan]

6. pharma companies bribing their way around the world

to get others hooked on their poison

Drug maker Eli Lilly hit with foreign bribery charges
By James O'Toole @jtotoole December 20, 2012: 2:11 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/20/news/companies/eli-lilly/index.html

Pharma giant GSK investigated for bribery
Global Times | 2013-7-12 1:18:01
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/795677.shtml#.UpUnzcWvfCo

Pfizer settles foreign bribery charges
By James O'Toole @CNNMoney August 7, 2012
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/07/news/companies/pfizer-bribery-charges/index.htm

Here’s Another Chinese Bribery Scandal for Novartis
Jacqueline Sahagian September 18, 2013
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/heres-another-chinese-bribery-scandal-for-novartis.html/?a=viewall



CEO Pay is a symptom of a huge problem. I'm not going to pay $300+ per month to cover a few minutes of a crooks pay.

Neither is Keith Olbermann.

Edit to add the Olbermann vid I meant to post and leaving the existing one because it is also on topic

[truedelphi]

7. You add an interesting layer to the discussion.

When a system has to show a profit, the needs of those supposedly served by that industry become irrelevant.

The ACA demands that we the consumers purchase a product. Having already purchased that product (health insurance) for some of my life, I can tell you that the health providers at HMO's like Kaiser have as their incentive not serving the clientele.

So we consumers in the USA get an inferior product, and due to that Inadequacy By Design, we DIE!

All that pain and suffering, on account of pure greed, for that extra 30% added on to actual costs. Europeans shake their heads and wonder why we are not out in the streets.

And much of the time we pay taxes on the income we use to pay for our health costs!

[Initech]

9. That's a good point.

And it's not just limited to pharmaceutical companies or the health care industry. It's a global problem and it affects nearly every company world wide. The notion that one must turn a gigantic profit in order for a company to sustain itself or the company goes bust affects everyone, and it's consumed business after business. But I got really offended by that article saying that doctors got paid too much which is why I posted this. Attacking doctor salaries as the reason our health care costs are so high is like blaming a mechanic's salary for high air fares. The CEO pay is a huge problem, but saying *ANY* profession gets paid more than they should is nothing more than Heritage Foundation / Ayn Rand garbage talking points. They don't work, they never have worked, and they never will work. Posting articles like that is just another reminder that the upper 1% can fuck with us and make us more miserable than we already are at the drop of a bucket.

[Laelth]

10. Yes. This is the problem of unregulated capitalism.

Because of this very system, wealth flows to the top. It must, or the Board of Directors will choose new leadership (i.e. some highly-paid CEO will lose a very lucrative job). Liberal government should, in response, 1) regulate capitalism to slow down the flow of wealth to the top and 2) actively re-distribute wealth downward to counteract this natural tendency. Otherwise, we get a society like what we have today--one characterized by massive, unsustainable inequality.

Indeed. This problem reaches far beyond the health-care industry.

-Laelth

[Igel]

11. This is partly because of regulation.

You start seeing truly huge compensation packages only after the compensation was disconnected from salary and pension contributions.

This disconnect resulted from salaries that were unseemly large decades ago and which government policy tried to prohibit--but which are not that large in retrospect. Tax policy and regulations made compensation something that was often deferred. With deferral came risk in the infamous "stock options".

With risk came uncertainty in how to account for the issuance today of stock options yet future. This was politically outrageous--this was compensation, but financial documents couldn't accurately portray them, not only financially outrageous. The GAPP solution was to bill the current value, whatever the future value was. So they build in the possibility of present worth of the deferred compensation being much lower than expected.

So is the compensation really worth what's indicated? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We'll find out in 10-20 years. But today we must say that tomorrow we will have always known what will have been being as of yesterday. It makes things very confusing when trying to understand the numbers, so all the details are lost and the typical attitude is that "compensation = salary." It's dull-witted, but avoids what would even be confusing to the Doctor.

So that compensation package is salary, health benefits, pension contributions, deferred income to avoid punitive taxes, stock options. Etc.

This is one of those horrible unintended consequences that nobody (well, not so many) foresaw. Income is relevant. Monthly pension payouts are relevant. But the stock options should be listed separately. However, that's not insufficiently politcally outraging to be palatable.

Sorry, don't see a point in outrage right now.

[Scuba]

12. 90% of America's hospitals are not-for-profit. What "retained earnings" there are ....

... are reinvested in the hospital, not paid to shareholders or executives or board members.

Yes, hospitals need to do better than break even. The old saying goes, "no margin, no mission". But the vast majority of our hospitals don't have profits, let alone profit increases. Breaking even is very challenging for hospitals; a 3% margin is consider a success in the industry.

Our not-for-profit hospitals are not the problem.

[elehhhhna]

14. And about 15 years ago all the BCBS state non-profits reregistered as FOR PROFIT

which is when I knew we were going to get effed quite hard. The profit to the middleman who gets our money by promising care then KEEPS it by denying care is why we are screwed.

[Egalitarian Thug]

17. It is a surprisingly large part of it when you take into account that each or these operations' CEO

are not the only executive.

Insurance is general is obscenely top heavy in management. If the CEO takes $20M out of the company (plus the nearly endless list of off-book compensations and perks that still "don't count" as compensation to the beneficiary, but are still deducted from the company tax liability), Then the CFO, COO, and all the other "Chiefs" will take comparative amounts. Of course each "Chief" has a team of Directors and or Presidents, each taking another comparable slice, and each of these parasites have large and very well compensated assistants and staff, and on down the line until you have this situation where a significant number of non-productive workers must be supported by the remaining workers that actually do produce.

As companies grow, this is unavoidable and is supposed to be one of the major sources of competition that is supposed to make the whole game work. The big companies get too big to adjust to changes in their market and this opens the door to competition from the smaller, more nimble companies. Of course we now see how the participants immediately place their focus on cheating the game rather than playing it, resulting in what we have today, a dysfunctional kleptocracy run by a tiny group that uses collusion to eliminate competition.