Meet the new 1%: healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid

**Doktor** · 14 Dec 11,, 21:42

(Guardian) No bankers in top 10 of America's best-paid executives, but those in charge of healthcare and drugs firms are in the money

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay.

There are no bankers in the top 10 of this year's GMI survey of CEO pay. In fact, they have been out since 2007, when Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein competed for the top slot with Richard Fuld, boss of soon-to-be-bust Lehman Brothers, and Angelo Morzillo, head of Countrywide, once the largest sub-prime home loan firm.

With the bankers still recovering from their tussle with hubris, old age and infirmity were 2010's boom businesses – at least in terms of pay. Leading the pack was John Hammergren, chief executive of McKesson Corporation. The firm's 52-year-old chairman, chief executive and president took home $145,266,971 in 2010.

McKeeson is probably the biggest company you've never heard of. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company is the largest pharmaceutical distributor in North America, distributing a third of the medicines used in the US. McKeeson's sales topped $112bn last year.

Hammergren's next closest rival was Joel Gemunder, outgoing boss of Omnicare, where he had been president since 1981. Omnicare is a pharmacy company that dispenses drugs in nursing homes – among other services – and had sales of $6.15bn last year. When Gemunder started at the firm it had sales of $150m. His 2010 total pay package was worth $98,283,242.

CVS Caremark, which operates 7,000 pharmacies across the US, awarded chief executive Thomas Ryan $68,079,823 in 2010. Caremark's share price was $71.70 on 1 May 1998, when Ryan joined the firm, and ended 2010 at $34.29.

Ronald Williams, boss of health insurance giant Aetna, made $57,787,786 in 2010. Another recipient of a golden goodbye, Williams made $50.4m on his stock options last year. Williams is one of the US's most prominent African American business leaders, and has campaigned against healthcare reforms that would have introduced a government-backed public insurance option to compete with private insurers. Since he became CEO, Aetna's stock price declined by 70%.

**Parihaka** · 14 Dec 11,, 21:53

I wonder how many pills people swallow are actually needed.

**Doktor** · 14 Dec 11,, 21:57

Originally Posted by Parihaka

I wonder how many pills people swallow are actually needed.

None. The result is the same, we will all die, it's a matter of time

**gunnut** · 14 Dec 11,, 23:47

Did I not call this? Take down the 1% and we go after the next 1%. Then the next. Then the next. There is no end.

**Doktor** · 15 Dec 11,, 00:22

Originally Posted by gunnut

Did I not call this? Take down the 1% and we go after the next 1%. Then the next. Then the next. There is no end.

1 done, 99 to go.

**gunnut** · 15 Dec 11,, 01:00

Originally Posted by Doktor

1 done, 99 to go.

What we should do is just go after the 99% and get it done in one shot.

**Doktor** · 15 Dec 11,, 01:35

Originally Posted by gunnut

What we should do is just go after the 99% and get it done in one shot.

Install communism

**gunnut** · 15 Dec 11,, 01:56

Originally Posted by Doktor

Install communism

We are trying very hard over here.

**tbm3fan** · 15 Dec 11,, 07:49

Originally Posted by gunnut

Did I not call this? Take down the 1% and we go after the next 1%. Then the next. Then the next. There is no end.

You are upset when the government spends "your" taxes unwisely so why should this be any different. These CEOs are being paid from subscriber premiums which is "your" money. It is not as though Aetna Health makes anything besides mountains of paper. They are nothing but a very big glorified bookkeeping operation that takes your money in and then pays it out for health care. Of course, that is after they skim their handling fee off the top for themselves. They actually believe your premium dollar is really their money.

**cyppok** · 15 Dec 11,, 08:34

I think the whole tirade against 1% that got there by unjust enrichment.

People are totally fine with Bill Gates getting there or Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.

What gets someone riled up is when someone gets there by virtue of siphoning off risk less capital from the productive members of society. Ergo if you are a vp of some division of goldman sachs and you simply take made up money from the fed at 0.5% per annum and reinvest it at leverage into treasuries for 2.5% per annum it seems a bit unjust

... If everyone could get it at 0.5% and invest at 2.5% they would do it but not only are you printing and lending excess cash to select few the 99% have to pay the treasury cost to the 1% in this scenario for no productive service rendered mind you.

**astralis** · 15 Dec 11,, 14:05

cyppok,

People are totally fine with Bill Gates getting there or Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.

What gets someone riled up is when someone gets there by virtue of siphoning off risk less capital from the productive members of society.

that's a pretty good assessment of the situation. look at the canonization of Steve Jobs, for instance.

heck, even Bill Gates has totally "re-invented" himself-- recall back in the late 90s how he was the big boogeyman in the tech world for muscling out people, using the Windows monopoly to gain advantage, etc etc.

people would be a LOT less upset about what the 1%/0.1%/xx% earn if it was not for the repeated instances where it was perceived that the value brought to the table was not just nonexistent, but NEGATIVE.

think of investment bankers getting bailed out because they held the global economy hostage and receiving bonuses anyway-- AFTER regulators had found out that they were deliberately advertising "safe" mortgage-backed securities...all the while internally shorting their position in full expectation of collapse.

this is fraud, not capitalism. and it's not a surprise that given this existing example, and how even the strivers-- the upper middle-class-- are failing to make headway, a LOT of people are wondering to what extent fraud is powering the income growth of the 1%.

**tbm3fan** · 15 Dec 11,, 19:25

Originally Posted by cyppok

I think the whole tirade against 1% that got there by unjust enrichment.

People are totally fine with Bill Gates getting there or Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google.

What gets someone riled up is when someone gets there by virtue of siphoning off risk less capital from the productive members of society. Ergo if you are a vp of some division of goldman sachs and you simply take made up money from the fed at 0.5% per annum and reinvest it at leverage into treasuries for 2.5% per annum it seems a bit unjust

... If everyone could get it at 0.5% and invest at 2.5% they would do it but not only are you printing and lending excess cash to select few the 99% have to pay the treasury cost to the 1% in this scenario for no productive service rendered mind you.

Was just talking to a patient who was asking about Medicare and how it would work in his situation. Then we got sidetracked and he mentioned how upset he was with the financial system in this country where you have people making mega bucks by gambling with your money and not making any kind of tangible product. Just a guy off the street, who I have known 4 years, and he was pretty upset about that.

**dalem** · 15 Dec 11,, 19:53

So create a money "market" or bank that doesn't gamble with your money and convince folks to use that. Everyone wins in that scenario.

-dale

**gunnut** · 15 Dec 11,, 20:44

Originally Posted by tbm3fan

You are upset when the government spends "your" taxes unwisely so why should this be any different. These CEOs are being paid from subscriber premiums which is "your" money. It is not as though Aetna Health makes anything besides mountains of paper. They are nothing but a very big glorified bookkeeping operation that takes your money in and then pays it out for health care. Of course, that is after they skim their handling fee off the top for themselves. They actually believe your premium dollar is really their money.

I don't have to buy health insurance.

Wait, the government forces me to buy now.

Try this. Don't pay taxes and see what happens.

I can choose NOT to buy a product from a business if I don't like it. I don't own anything made by Apple.

I can't NOT pay taxes, or choose not to do business with the government. They will send armed thugs to force me to pay or confine me to a small room for a few years.

**astralis** · 15 Dec 11,, 21:18

gunnut,

eh, you can always choose. if the obligations of citizenship prove too much to bear, one can always move elsewhere and renounce US citizenship.