The Cause of The Skyrocketing Cost of Healthcare

Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum's Mad About Medicine blog

Those of you who are struggling to pay for your generic medicines or wondering why the doctor is charging you a $5.00 co-pay, give some thought to these facts about how our health care dollars are allocated. At the end of this post, there is a list of 23 health companies I found on Forbes.com, what the CEO was paid in 2005, and the average paid to the CEO in the past five years.

Imagine adding vice presidents, Board of Directors, stock holders and the other 200-300 other companies all cashing in on your health to that total at the bottom.

Based on this, the next time you want to argue with your Primary Care doctor's front desk about a $5.00 co-pay, remember that he makes an average of $149,000.00 per year. On the other hand -- using United Healthcare as an example -- your insurance company paid their CEO -- one man -- $324,000,000 over a recent five year period.

If you are uninsured, try calling any one of these 23 CEOs and see if they will give you free insurance.

BTW: 10% of 14.9 billion is 1.4 billion. If basic insurance costs $8,000/year for a family then taking 10% from just these CEO salaries would insure 35,000 Americans a year for five years. That is a lot of people that can be helped just by 23 men. Looking at the companies as a whole that profit from health care, we can probably pay for every uninsured person in this country for decades to come.

The numbers are numbing, which is why we should do something about this.

• United Health Group
  CEO: William W McGuire
  2005: 124.8 mil
  5-year: 342 mil


• Forest Labs
  CEO: Howard Solomon
  2005: 92.1 mil
  5-year: 295 mil


• Caremark Rx
  CEO: Edwin M Crawford
  2005: 77.9 mil
  5-year: 93.6 mil


• Abbott Lab
  CEO: Miles White
  2005: 26.2 mil
  5-year: 25.8 mil


• Aetna
  CEO: John Rowe
  2005: 22.1 mil
  5-year:57.8 mil


• Amgen
  CEO: Kevin Sharer
  2005:5.7 mil
  5-year:59.5 mil


• Bectin-Dickinson
  CEO: Edwin Ludwig
  2005: 10 mil
  5-year:18 mil


• Boston Scientific
  CEO:
  2005:38.1 mil
  5-year:45 mil


• Cardinal Health
  CEO: James Tobin
  2005:1.1 mil
  5-year:33.5 mil


• Cigna
  CEO: H. Edward Hanway
  2005:13.3 mil
  5-year:62.8 mil


• Genzyme
  CEO: Henri Termeer
  2005: 19 mil
  5-year:60.7 mil


• Humana
  CEO: Michael McAllister
  2005:2.3 mil
  5-year:12.9 mil


• Johnson & Johnson
  CEO: William Weldon
  2005:6.1 mil
  5-year:19.7 mil


• Laboratory Corp America
  CEO: Thomas MacMahon
  2005:7.9 mil
  5-year:41.8 mil


• Eli Lilly
  CEO: Sidney Taurel
  2005:7.2 mil
  5-year:37.9 mil


• McKesson
  CEO: John Hammergen
  2005: 13.4 mil
  5-year:31.2 mil


• Medtronic
  CEO: Arthur Collins
  2005: 4.7 mil
  5-year:39 mil


• Merck Raymond Gilmartin
  CEO:
  2005: 37.8 mil
  5-year:49.6 mil


• PacifiCare Health
  CEO: Howard Phanstiel
  2005: 3.4 mil
  5-year: 8.5 mil


• Pfizer
  CEO: Henry McKinnell
  2005: 14 mil
  5-year: 74 mil


• Well Choice
  CEO: Michael Stocker
  2005: 3.2 mil
  5-year: 10.7 mil


• WellPoint
  CEO: Larry Glasscock
  2005: 23 mil
  5-year: 46.8 mil


• Wyeth
  CEO: Robert Essner
  2005:6.5 mil
  5-year: 28.9 mil

TOTAL 2005: 559.8 mil

TOTAL 5-Year: 14.9 billion