Cigna gives $110 million compensation package to ex-CEO

[nightrain]

The insurance giant Cigna last year gave compensation packages worth more than $120 million to two executives who left the company, according to a filing with the SEC on Friday.

The vast majority of that total went to former chairman and CEO H. Edward Hanway who left his post with a retirement package worth $110.9 million -- which included $18.8 million in executive compensation for 2009, as well as a healthy pension plan, deferred compensation and stock options.

source-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/cigna-gives-1109-million_n_506974.html


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We'll be seeing more of this kind of obscenity if the disease management insurance corporations win this upcoming vote. Obama should not have made deals with these thugs. That's our money, that should have gone toward CARE!

[Jackpine Radical]

1. ...and they try to say the insurance industry has no compassion.

[Sal Minella]

4. Nothing, nothing in the world, sadder than an unemployed CEO

wandering around out there in the world, bereft . . . I'm so glad the companies are looking after these poor guys properly.

I've been meaning to drop a note of inquiry to make sure their health/dental/opto insurance is paid in advance forever, too. Just to make sure. /sarcasm. Edit: grammar fail.

[havocmom]

2. Wonder how many claims they denied to provide for that obscenity

Oh, we can trust the insurers and HMOs to do the right thing when everyone is forced to buy their product.

Sure we can.

[rfranklin]

3. Who cares? Those people are dead!

Just got keep sayin' no 'til they go away.

[sabrina 1]

6. They lost customers last year, but as I said in my post below

they don't need individuals who are sick or out of work and who can't pay for high cost premiums. Little by little they have been given public funds to manage. For every subsidy to someone who can't afford to buy a premium, or who qualifies for Medicaid, private insurance will now manage those funds. The 'poor' have suddenly become their biggest source of profit as this Democratic Bill has removed a real public option, something the Ins. Corps spent millions on accomplishing, and have funnelled that public money through the Private Ins. Industry.

That gives them tens of millions of guaranteed new customers with the taxpayers paying for it and the opportunity to manage the money that used to go directly, through Medicaid eg, to the actual Health Care providers, doctors, hospitals etc.

Now before it gets to them Big Insurance will take out their profits first, costing the tax-payers far more than it would under a Publicly managed program as both Medicaid and Medicare used to be.

[sabrina 1]

5. The Democrats have given them Public Funds to

manage now. Well, MORE public funds than they already had their greedy hands on.

They will be 'managing' Medicaid funds and all Subsidies the anti-Public Option crowd have been cheering for. That is tax payer dollars.

Have they asked themselves how the five biggest Insurance Corps had record profits in 2009 despite losing millions of customers?

Ever since the transference of Public Health Care funds to Private Insurance, doctors and hospitals have had to wait weeks for payment. The Insurance Corps hold onto the Government Funds for an average of 55 days, and some doctors are now refusing to take patients on these programs.

It is going to get even worse, now that they will be managing 'subsidies'.

This Bill will transfer billions of public funds into the hands of Private Insurance.

When the Government pays costs directly, without the middlemen, they are paid fairly promptly and without a deduction for profits.

Big Business thanks Democrats for outdoing Republicans in the moving public funds into private hands. Wall St, the Health Insurance Industry ~ next Social Security Funds. And when they accomplish that, how long will the elderly have to wait for their payments as the Ins. Ind. holds the money as they are now doing with health care funds?

Absolutely amazing to see any Democrat supporting this blatant transfer of funds to private business.

[bnymellon sucks]

7. My Heart Aches

OMFG!!!! How will he buy food and clothes and pay the rent when the $110M runs out! We need to have congress take action right way! Support mega expensive Park Ave condos, not houses in Springfield (state name here).

Insurance companies are the evil of the evil (strike that, Dick Cheney is the evil of evil). I guess they're trying to get as much money out of it before the wrecking ball hits. Oh and do I want it to hit HARD.

visit my site where I battle a corporate giant:


http://www.bnymellon-lies.com

[Uncle Joe]

8. I wonder how many people lost their health care for that package?

Thanks for the thread, nightrain.

[MagnusLiberal]

9. These CEO salaries are obscene.

How can any company, let alone a health insurance company, ever justify such obscene compensation? Free market? One would think they could find suitable CEO talent for a far more reasonable price tag...

How many necessary medical procedures were denied to pay for the CEOs? How much were insurance premiums jacked up to pay for the CEOs?

We as a people should collectively stop supporting these types of companies. I realize that all health insurance company CEOs are probably obscenely paid, but imagine if everyone stopped doing business with the company that had the highest CEO pay -- it would send a strong message to the other companies to keep their CEO pay in check. How do we turn an idea into reality? Thoughts?

[AdHocSolver]

10. Getting health insurance has to be divorced from getting it through one's employer.

The large corporations do NOT want health insurance reform as they use the threat of health insurance loss if one suffers a job loss in order to bludgeon employees into abject obedience.

This came about with financialization of the economy. Even more significant than obscene executive pay, is the fact that the huge amounts of money amassed as premiums allows these insurance companies to buy huge blocks of stock in hospital corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and many other corporations. This gives these insurance companies the power to dictate policy to these corporations by an implied threat of manipulating share price through the buying and selling of the large blocks of stock that they own.

The entire U.S. economy is being propped up on a fragile life support system. The dot.com bust, the real estate bubble and bust, and the banking system meltdown are merely tremors on the way to the big financial quake that is coming, and about which nothing is being done to prevent it.

The only solution is to stop the massive debt due to importing practically everything we buy (get rid of NAFTA, the WTO, and its ilk), separate the financial gamblers from the money supply (reinstall the Glass-Steagall Act), and enable people to access affordable health care by unbundling health insurance from employment (single payer health insurance, or at a minimum, a comprehensive public option).

Unfortunately, none of this may happen until the economy collapses severely, and if the government stays as inept and corrupt as it currently is, maybe not even then.

[depakid]

11. Woo Hoo! American taxpayers now get to subsidize even more of this under the Democrats' plans!

[Myrina]

12. ... but, but , but ... if we didn't have insurance companies ...

.... you know what? I can't wrap my head around the twisted logic required to finish that pro HCR bullshit statement, even in jest.

TO HELL WITH INSURANCE COMPANIES!! :mad: :nuke: