alt Hacker NewsHealthcare executive pay is pretty darn high, more money than any family needs to live comfortably.
Keep in mind this is just for Blue Shield California. There are executives of other health insurance systems in other states and regions who are making similar compensation.
However, I'll go ahead and say right now that I support the idea of these executives being paid these salaries, but on one condition: that we first achieve the goal of 100% of Americans having affordable access to healthcare. Once that goal is achieved, then we can start paying executives big bonuses and incentives. Deal? (Yeah, right...)
https://www.blueshieldca.com/content/dam/bsca/en/member/docs...
Below is a summary of the compensation paid in 2024 to Blue Shield of California’s President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and top three highest paid executives (other than the CEO and CFO) who were employed by Blue Shield of California at year-end.
Paul Markovich
President and Chief Executive Officer
$11,191,674
Sandra Clarke
EVP, Chief Operating Officer
$5,765,368
Peter Long
EVP, Strategy and Health Solutions
$4,360,245
Lisa Davis
EVP, Chief Information Officer
$2,873,613
Michael Stuart
EVP, Chief Financial Officer
$2,406,837
Some other CEOs:
Cerner (EMR provider to the VA), $35 million pay package: https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/cerner-to-pay-new...
Pfizer, $24.6M pay package: https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/rebound-year-pfizer-ceo-...
Epic Systems is a private company, so there's no executive pay information, but the founder Judy Falkner's estimated net worth is $7.8 billion. Perhaps Epic could reduce the price of its very expensive software for providers to help ease healthcare costs and maybe Judy could give up some of those billions and not notice any difference in her quality of life?
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One thing to note: blue shield of California is a non-profit. So no money is going to shareholders.
Blue Shield of California has 4.5 million plan members, so all of these executive salaries combined add up to 49 cents per member per month. It's not a significant factor in premium costs.
I think this summary is reductive, because it ignores the surprisingly dense layers of middle management in hospitals and clinics that are paid more than the medical professionals (and even that ignores external middle managers like PBMs etc).
BCBS CA revenue is approximately $25B. The total of above is $25.6M. That's 0.1%.
You may view those salaries as appropriate for leading companies of this size or immoral and outrageous. But either way executive comp is not the big problem with US healthcare costs.