United Health CEO's salary is $102,000 an hour.

[secondwind]

www.sickforprofit.com

[CatholicEdHead]

1. How can he live on that pittance of a wage?

:sarcasm:

[secondwind]

2. beats me..............

[Honeycombe8]

3. Wow. That is shocking! That's also MY ins. co.! nt

[secondwind]

4. check out the website.......sign up and fight for reform!

[Clio the Leo]

5. And famed photographer Annie Leibovitz is bankrupt.....

.... in part because of debt incurred because of her father's and her partner's illnesses and deaths.

She "hocked" the rights to all previous and future photographs to pay her bills and is now being sued.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iWm74SpRNN3mHids9AJDoW7GdlJA

The waste is disgusting and shameful.

[HamdenRice]

15. Most of her financial problems arose from real estate speculation, not health care costs

Real estate, remodeling, and litigation. The linked article is interesting, but it suggests that the cost of her shoots was involved, but in an interview about Annie on NPR just the other day, her former boss, Tina Brown, was saying that the magazine paid those costs.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. If the law was not skewed against GLBT partners, Annie would be fine

And that is fact that anyone can simply read and learn. She is far from the only person I have known in similar circumstances.

Did Tina actually say that the magazine paid the costs for 100% of Annie's shoots? You claim she did. That was not what I heard her say.
GLBT couples and families have many legal problems imposed on us by the heterosexual community. It gets expensive and burdensome, and the only reason people like Annie don't have a level playing field is because of the straight community insists upon bigotry. This is an uncomfortable fact for many who wish to gloss over the results of their prejudices.
The circumstances for Annie and her partner were not equal to those of their heterosexual counterparts. Unfair, unjust, the double standard makes all such bad situations worse. That is just how it is. In fact, it also makes good situations far more expensive. It is just the way it is until the straight community stops being comfortable with bigotry toward their neighbors.

[HamdenRice]

19. No she wouldn't be fine.

She certainly had one debt caused by not being able to get married -- the tax on a property that Sontag willed to her. But she could have sold that property and paid the tax. Instead she borrowed to pay that tax. It's not clear that she wanted to get married, though. She and Sontag did not live together or even acknowledge their relationship until after Sontag's death.

But by all news accounts she is bankrupt because she bought an expensive property in the Village, engaged in wildly expensive renovations, damaged a neighbors house, got sued, decided to buy that neighbors house, engaged in extensive litigation with neighbors -- and then the real estate market collapsed, leaving her, like millions of Americans "under water."

By any quantitative measure, she is bankrupt because of her own bad decisions, not because of the unavailability of the marital estate tax exclusion.

[ksoze]

6. $1,558 an hour total comp in 2008

Still a lot, but check your numbers and dates/

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Somebody has to keep Sotheby's, Christies & Gagosian in business, because none of us

can.

[havocmom]

8. That explains a lot about how they can't compete

:puke:

[NYC_SKP]

9. $208 Million per Year? Are you sure of that?

Since there's no link that tells us the annual salary.

:shrug:

[mudplanet]

10. Just remember, if we allow an increase in the minimum wage it'll cause businesses to close and

people to lose jobs.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. I wonder if the insurance companies have people here. Whose voting this down?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

12. He should give his salary to someone who needs treatment for their cancer

$102,000 would take care of radiation treatment for one person in one hour. The next hour could be MRI's for life. How can a person accept that sort of salary and sleep at night?

[Hutzpa]

13. K&R

for more folks to see.....

This is an outrage, absolutely ridiculous.....:mad:


:kick:

[NecklyTyler]

14. K&R

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. The utter wickedness of Anglo-Saxon capitalism beggars belief. Then there would be

his bonuses, I expect. We won't trawl the gutter for the mere bagatelle of his everyday expenses. Millions of dollars, I expect, excluding the cost of Lear jets. Or more likely, excluding them.

[City Lights]

18. How did you arrive at that figure?

I think breaking down an annual salary to hourly is a great way to make a point, however, I can't use it unless I can back it up. The latest information I found indicates Hemsley's annual salary is just over $3.2 million, which does not break down to $102,000/hour. I'd appreciate a link to his salary information.

UnitedHealth Group's Stephen Hemsley - CEO Compensation
May 14, 2009 — 4:11pm ET | By Dan Bowman

Total Compensation: $3,241,042

Details: An $895 million class-action lawsuit over stock-option back dating aside, Hemsley still manages to make the cut for this list at No. 10. The UHG CEO's base salary was $1.3 million in 2008, to go along with a non-equity incentive plan compensation worth just over $1.8 million and "other compensation" amounting to slightly more than $119,000.

Hemsley's other compensation was a combination of the company matching his contributions under the 401(k) plan and the company matching contributions under his executive savings plan. According to the SEC, "in May 2006, the amount of Hemsley's supplemental retirement benefit was frozen based on his current age and average base salary and converted into a lump sum of $10,703,229." Because of this, "there was no increase in the benefit payable to Mr. Hemsley under his supplemental retirement benefit" in 2008.

Read more: http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/unitedhealth-groups-stephen-hemsley-ceo-compensation/2009-05-14#ixzz0PCEQfOJ7

Based on the information below, from kos, Hemsley isn't even the highest paid healthcare CEO (he's #10.) That "honor" belongs to Ron Williams of Aetna:

Ron Williams - Aetna

Total Compensation: $24,300,112

Details: Williams earned $24,300,112 in total compensation for 2008, with more than half of that ($13,537,365) coming from option awards. He also received an additional $6,456,630 in stock awards to go along with his base salary of $1,091,764.

Personal use of a corporate aircraft and vehicle, as well as financial planning and 401(k) company matches added up to $101,487 for Williams.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/26/735411/-Health-insurance-industry-CEO-salary-survey,-stay-calm-for-this

[HamdenRice]

20. Number! You want math, I suppose! Math, numbers, accounting are KKKapitalist!

At least that's what I've been told here at times.

[City Lights]

21. I hear ya.

Shame on us for wanting facts to back up our claims. :spank:

[redqueen]

22. Even if it's only $1500/hr... it's indefensible. (nt)

[blueworld]

23. Does he clip coupons?

It's more obscene when you consider the filthy scandal his company has been involved in for years AND the bucks they spend on lobbyists & commercials & marketing materials. Does any of the loot go to someone's health care somewhere?

I know - I just smacked myself in the head for such a stupid question. Hope I don't need a doctor visit. :sarcasm:

[Gormy Cuss]

24. I'm sure he does, but not the kind used at the supermarket. n/t

[SalviaBlue]

25. Sociopath... Thom Hartmann wrote an excellent column on this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/profiling-ceos-and-their_b_245373.html

snip

But what part of being a CEO could be so difficult -- so impossible for mere mortals -- that it would mean that there are only a few hundred individuals in the United States capable of performing it?

In my humble opinion, it's the sociopath part.

snip


Today's modern transnational corporate CEOs -- who live in a private-jet-and-limousine world entirely apart from the rest of us -- are remnants from the times of kings, queens, and lords. They reflect the dysfunctional cultural (and Calvinist/Darwinian) belief that wealth is proof of goodness, and that that goodness then justifies taking more of the wealth...