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And now it can be told: Yes, Virginia, health insurance CEOs are making huge amounts of money while their firms rapidly increase premiums and work diligently to find ways to not pay for their customers’ care. From the Washington Post:
The chief executive of UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, reaped almost $100 million from exercising stock options last year, the company reported Thursday.
Stephen J. Hemsley exercised 4.9 million options in February 2009 at a gain of $98.6 million, the company said in a regulatory filing. The options were awarded almost a decade earlier.
After using some of the shares to pay for the transactions and cover related taxes, Hemsley held onto the stock he acquired instead of cashing it in, the company reported.
Thank god Democrats did not add a public option to their health care reform bill. It might have depressed UnitedHealth Group’s stock prices, and their poor CEO might have only gotten, gosh, $65 million from his stock options. Democrats should be so proud they did not give people even the option of cutting out this unneeded middleman, and all that extra money can go to Mr. Hemsely and his friends, rather than save the federal government and individual customers hundreds of billions.
I’m sure once we are all forced to buy private health insurance from companies still protected from federal anti-trust laws or public competition, our premium dollars will then actually go to cover sick people’s medical care instead even larger compensation packages for executives.
I think Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), the whole Republican caucus, President Obama, who decided to not fight for a public option, and everyone else in Washington who shares responsibility for killing the public option deserves a nice big campaign contribution from Hemsley.
Let’s keep watching to see if Mr. Hemsley shows appropriate gratitude.
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About FDL Action
98.6–how poetic for a guy that profits off other’s illness. . . .
With that kind of kaching, I’ll bet he doesn’t need to buy his own dog food, unless you count lobbying costs as insurance.
If you live in California you can help fight for true single payer: http://californiaonecare.org/
If we can get it going here it will inevitably spread to every state.
Most executives are also provided with accounting services by their employers to assist them to figure out exactly how much they can keep, how much to sell to pay taxes, how much to give away to younger generations.
America now has entire industries dedicated to generational theft via accounting and tax manipulation. It is really shameful.
Edit needed:
A 3 order of magnitude discrepancy. $65 million… still an obscene amount.
Yes, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that those stiff-spined republicans Lieberman, Lincoln and Nelson stood up with their DINO Leader Orhama and killed that public-y option-y thing. My heart would be breaking if Mr. Helmsley had made even 1¢ less.
Do you suppose that exact amount is accidental? Don’t think so, it’s the same as Rahms’ 1 1/2 finger salute.
(but I just read an article that mentioned the jobs that the stimulus bill funded at the Savannah River cleanup project. For every $500,000 spent, we saw one job position. Quite a bit of overhead I guess)
They just had an interview on the Ed Schultz show with Wendell Potter. He was discussing how Wellpoint, established author in part of the Health Care Bill, was changing the way they catagorized administrative costs so they can continue making the profits they have become accustomed to. Since the law, that they authored, now states that 85% of all primimum dollars must go to actual medical services, WEllpoint has decided to make administrative costs be catagorized as medical care services.
How much time, and how many lives, and how much money to fight this semantic game playing by the Medical Insurance Industry must we be forced to endure.??
single payer Now.
The folks over at DailyKos are solidly behind this healthcare bill, while you guys claim it’s not “progressive” at all. Nothing that can ever be passed into law will ever be progressive according to you guys, so have fun losing every battle you fight….
Let’s not forget that we should be grateful to Mr. Hemsley and his colleagues for paying for our government for us. After all, we have the best government money can buy, and somebody has to pay for it.
96 fucking million dollars? In one year? Just stock options?
That’s a lot of dead and poorly treated peasants.
For so few to have so much, many must have little.
This is really an outrage. Think how many children that would feed, house, clothe, and buy health insurance for. How many schools it would help. The list goes on, of course, and none of it matters because he won’t do any of those things. I’ll bet a new yacht is in the offing though.
A crummy 100 million? That’s nothing. Last year, 25 top hedge fund managers on wall st made 1 billion average each. Each. !. Bill. ion. Each. 25 billion total. In 2008 (ad bad year?), they pulled in only 11 billion total. Of course, this was all thanks to Bush and Obummer’s bailout.
Of course we should roll back the Kennedy tax cuts and nail anyone over 5 mill/yr at 99%. I don’t think the economy would suffer even the slightest. But, of course that would take action by the sheeple of America.
The damage that money will to do our democracy is immeasurable. There is no way (possibly with very rare exceptions) that anyone can have that kind of personal wealth and not look at the rest of humanity as mere insects. That’s all we are to them; and ironically, if it wasn’t for the entire edifice of an economy and government that is powered by us working slobs, none of that wealth would be obtainable. None.
small edit
I’d rather lose every battle I ever fight than ever sell out to the right wing ideas that cause so much human suffering and death.
Hope you and all at DKos sleep well at night while the thousands still die annually because they can’t afford health care and the hundreds of thousands still suffer because they can’t afford health care and the untold millions continue to suffer financially for the sin of getting sick or injured.
Sleep well my friend.
I do.
I guess that makes us all UNLUCKY….
well put.. maybe it just shows how selfish they really are…
Gingrich must have sent this guy, or maybe UnitedHealth is his/her employer
No FDL draw its line in the sand months ago. This bill crossed it.
There’s no arguing with the “team sports” types. All they’re interested in is a “win” not policy, so that’s what they get; an empty “win.”
Ah yes, whilst La Grifter Palin rallied her minions into shrieking about death panels, one percenter creeps like this actually kept the death panel mills a-churning. Talk about tossing granny down the chute! Way to go. And to those Dems who love ‘em some of this there HCR… fine! that’s their right. Doesn’t mean I have to go along with this corporate rip off perpetrated on us by this wolf in “Democratic” sheep’s clothing of an empty suit called Orahma. To each his or her own.
Raising the age-old Q of whether lip service is better than no service at all.
Depends on the lips!
Would these Insurance Execs stand to pull in more now since The WH has given ‘em an additional 31 million new customers ?
Jon -
What you see happening as a result of “health care reform” is exactly why I feel such dread at the prospect of “financial system reform”, “space policy reform”, “postal system reform”, any sort of “reform” that Obama and the Democrats might threaten to pursue.
Did you read the headline? You “folks over at Daily Kos” have won a battle that resulted in a 50% increase in the income of a multi-millionaire CEO, at cost of bearing a corporate middleman to everyone else …
… with “progressive victories” like these you “folks over at Daily Kos” will be celebrating ever-increasing upwards wealth transfer 24×7 soon enough. I hope that is your goal …
Exactly. “Daily Kos” is an example of “Progressives Gone Wild!”, meaning “tribalism taken to the logical conclusion of an illogical extreme”.
Why should progressive be happy. This is not what they have wanted for years. I thought that was Medicare for all or something close to that. The second you declare victory is also when you stop fighting.
No reason to show gratitude…he’s already gotten what he paid.
Responding to that guy’s fairly vapid comment …
BLASPHEMY!
Didn’t you hear? This HCR is a big effing deal. A MAJOR victory for the democrats….uh
and the children of course.
Dude. Helmsley exercised his options in February of 2009 and so he clearly dumped his stock before he knew the actual outcome of the legislation. Your post draws on a logical fallacy worthy of a propagandist or a tea partier. Oh wait…
The children! The children!
Speaking of logical fallacies, what does the outcome of the legislation have to do with anything when the deal was structured and conducted in a heads you lose, tails AHIP wins fashion? Real HCR never had a chance.
So dkos types come here to defend insurer CEOs? wow.
Dude, you’re assuming he didn’t know the outcome of the legislation.
Which is a logical fallacy given the amount of money they spent ensuring just this outcome. Yes as far back as February. In fact, they started influencing this outcome in 2008 before the big O was even elected.
It was just poor saps like you and me that didn’t know the fix was already in and what the outcome would be. He (and Obama) certainly knew, and they got the bill they wanted all along. From the beginning. Verbatim.
If you really want to hang out with tea baggers, I’m sure you would fit right in given your denial of facts and history.
They sure have their priorities straight!
It said he is still holding on to most of them. So if the stock went down he would lose money.
Mostly the Emperor’s attire, but occasionally now they’re finding they have to defend the ones chosen to sit at the table with him, too.
But they need to do it, otherwise the republicans would win and then profits would be more important than people, or … something like that.
Mike Ross, Max Baucus: This one’s your doing. Seed the data with that from United Healthcare in the construction of the bill. Even before the White House decided to give away the store.
Nice lil quid pro quo.
F==ck the Daily Kos and all the other turncoats who put unbearable pressure on the last few progressives who might have made a difference in this health care outcome. But most of all, f–ck Barky Orahma, liar and HC Insurer Friend in Chief, who has sold us all down the river and betrayed fundamental campaign promises. He was not rolled by health care insurers. Instead, he rolled any and all progressives who might have made a difference in the outcome.
I can’t remember another time in hisory when a candidate lied so competely to get elected. He has literally done the opposite of everything he promised. Even though he wasn’t one of my first 2 choices I am really pissed that I voted for Orahma.
“profiting off other’s illness..”
Let’s make a clear distinction. He’s DOING NOTHING OF VALUE and profiting of other’s illness.
I work with a team that has a remarkable new cancer technology. Most of the team have over 20 years in the trenches, a few have another decade on that. If we’re all lucky, we split $98.6 million among 50-100 people. The technology will significantly extend the lives of 50,000 people each year, perhaps more.
I trust that we as a society feel this is a reasonable trade off to entice hundreds of thousands of people to keep working on better methods.
Evidently D’s/dkos offered up more than the repukes
Did you see the report today that those with pre-existing conditions that are already in State Sponsored High Risk Pools are Not eligible for the new Lower Cost Fed High Risk Pools? (even if their disease is in remission)
Secretary Sebelius responded, “sorry that’s the way the Law was written”
200,000 estimated affected.
read it here
I just can’t believe the absolute GULLIBILITY of the apologists for this POS law. Come August it’s going to be “sure we need to fix it, that’s why you need to vote us back in.” And they’ll FALL for it. If it wasn’t so sad, it would be hilarious (in a larry, moe and curly kind of way).
Many years ago I saw Pink Flying Elephants while Larry, Moe and Curly (maybe it was Shemp) were back in Cave Man Times.
Luckily the effect wore off. It’s a shame that for those that have chosen to take the D’s Blue pill, they will just keep replaying the scene. Wished they’d take the pink pill, and find some reality.