Category: Pay

JGrimes
Sen. Chuck Grassley has been following the money in health care for years now. Yesterday, he wrote to the AMA, the American Cancer Society and a bunch of other nonprofit advocacy groups to ask how much of their funding comes from the drug, device and insurance industries.
The groups, which told the WSJ they […]

JGrimes
A couple stories in the news this morning about pay for health-care executives:
The top 20 execs at a big public hospital in Miami will volunteer for a 4%-5% pay cut and drop their car and executive allowances, the Miami Herald reports. The cuts at Jackson Health System come as the local county commission, […]

JGrimes
More pharma corporate governance action: Abbott shareholders voted down a proposal calling for a non-binding vote on executive compensation. The company had opposed the measure; the owners of 40% of the company’s shares voted in favor, Dow Jones Newswires reports.
Just yesterday, Pfizer shareholders passed a “say on pay” resolution (52% in favor) and […]

JGrimes
Both Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson held their annual meetings today, which makes for an interesting study in contrasts.
Pfizer shareholders voted to give themselves an “advisory vote” on executive compensation, while J&J shareholders voted down a similar proposal, notes Pete Loftus of Dow Jones Newswires. Both votes were close: 52% in favor at […]

Jacob Goldstein
Big companies often point to their rivals to set (and justify) CEO pay. That may explain the close clustering of pay in the $16 million to $18 million range for most of the Big Pharma CEOs included in the WSJ’s 2008 CEO compensation survey, which is out today and includes 200 companies […]

JGrimes
Merck had a tough year last year: The company’s stock price fell some 48% as it was beset by controversy around cholesterol drug Vytorin, weakening sales of other key drugs and, of course, the broader market decline.
So CEO Dick Clark didn’t get nearly the hefty pay raise he reaped during the company’s strong […]

JGrimes
Want evidence that Corporate America may be getting the message from the public flogging Wall Streeters have taken for giving themselves big bonuses? Take a look at health insurer Cigna.
In our experience, executive bonuses rarely register a blip in company earnings reports. But today Cigna was quick to highlight a “significant” reduction, in […]

JGrimes
When you pay doctors for every procedure they do, there’s an incentive for unnecessary treatments. There’s a financial reward for fixing problems that better care might have prevented. And there’s no incentive for doctors to prevent complications.
On the other hand, few people want to go back to capitation — paying a single, annual […]

JGrimes
As Democrats in Congress consider covering more of the uninsured kids by expanding Medicaid, they may want to consider this: Fewer doctors are accepting Medicaid patients not just because fees are so low, but because if often takes months to get paid.
Studies show only half of U.S. doctors don’t restrict or cap the […]

JGrimes
The options backdating mess at United Health may finally be nearing an end.
Bill McGuire, former chairman and CEO of the health insurer, will pay $30 million and forfeit nearly $107 million in stock options to settle a federal class-action lawsuit about stock-option backdating.
The amount of money being forked over by McGuire is “pretty […]