I’ve been trying to be an informed voter and have been spending a fair amount of time trying to learn more about our current health-care system. All facts and figures here via Google.
In California, Blue Cross was allowed to be changed from being a not-for-profit to being for-profit in the 90’s, with a domino effect on other states. Blue Cross covers roughly one in seven people in California.
As an aside, from North Carolina we read this from three years ago, with more recent figures hard to find online somehow:
“Aetna CEO John Rowe had total compensation of $30.6 million and Cigna CEO H. Edward Hanway received $12.3 million. That includes millions of dollars in stock compensation. Meanwhile, the president of Cigna HealthCare of North Carolina made a total of $279,526 last year.”
You catch that? $279, 526. Go Cigna! So much for the idea of needing to pay millions to attract top talent. Larry Glasscock, BBA Cleveland State, graduate school NA, was CEO in ’06 of Wellpoint, which owns Blue Cross in California and a dozen other states. According to this, his total compensation that year was $52.4 million.
My daughter’s premiums, had Blue Cross accepted her, would have been $133/month as a young single woman for a plan without maternity benefits. Let’s round that up to an even $1600/year.
Let’s picture, for a moment, how many people would have to pay that premium for one year while requiring absolutely zero in medical pay-out, in order to sustain just that one CEO salary. Just for that one executive.
Three million, two hundred seventy-five thousand people. Paying that premium faithfully, month by month, and not going to the doctor once. Not even getting so much as one flu shot in 12 months. Over three and a quarter million people.
And the CEO’s claim their pay has no influence on the medical care of their subscribers.
As for the town hall talking points and the obscenely defaced pictures of our President that are beneath each and every one of us, the screaming and the shouting, the attempts to silence all discussion of changing any part of this system–
–Remember the Watergate line.
“Follow the money.”
‘Cause there’s a whole lot of it (that’s for lobbying in 2009, so far) that sure isn’t being spent on taking care of us.