As Occupy Wall Street has gone from an obscure protest covered only on blogs and social media to a national phenomenon, the apparent parallels between the issues it is raising and the issues we have been raising in health care grows.

 A growing number of protesters are calling themselves the “99 Percenters,” referring to those who are not in the top 1% of earners.  The top 1% of income is clearly greater than $250,000 per year, and likely …

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The revelations about the huge golden parachute given the outgoing CEO of ostensibly non-profit Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield induced some public discussion about the disconnect between executive compensation and the mission of health care organizations.

First, new proxy statements revealed the compensation of executives of two large for-profit health care insurers/managed care companies.

Cigna

As reported by the AP, via ABC News, the CEO got a big raise:

Cigna Corp. CEO David …

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Recently, reports about deceptive marketing and other questionable practices used by the growing for-profit higher education industry in the US appeared in the news.  For example, per Bloomberg:

Recruiters at U.S. for-profit colleges lied to entice students and encouraged them to commit fraud to qualify for aid, a report by the Government Accountability Office found.

Recruiters at all 15 colleges studied by the GAO, Congress’s investigational arm, misled potential students about the …

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In 2005, we entitled a post, “How Can a $124.8 Million a Year CEO Make Health Care More Affordable?”

At that time, we contrasted the enormous compensation given to the then CEO of UnitedHealth, Dr. William McGuire, with the stated mission of his corporation.  Since then, we have traced the travails of UnitedHealth and its leadership.  Dr. McGuire was eventually accused of receiving backdated stock options (which at one time …

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