Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Humana For Sale


 Image result for for sale cheap sign

By Jeff Simpson

The last CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Gail Boudreaux, left in November 2014 but did not leave lonely:

Boudreaux is in line for a hefty severance package. She will take home at least $23.3 million, which includes cash payments and stock options, according to hermost recent employment agreement. Boudreaux will also receive her 2014 salary and incentives.

A few years before that, former CEO "Dollar" Bill McGuire left the company with a Billion dollar severance.  

That is just paying for two people who do not even work there in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Current Unitedhealthcare CEO,Stephen Hemsley, does alright for himself also:

  1. According to bizjournals.com the country's highest-paid CEO, Stephen Hemsley, made $101.96 million in 2010. In 2011 he was named the highest paid CEO by Forbes following a large gain in the value of his stock ownership. In late 2011, Hemsley's most recent annual compensation was estimated by Forbes at $48.8 million. 
Why is this relevant for our Wisconsin political blog?  For one, every year when your health insurance premiums raise, maybe it is not all President Obama's fault and two, a major employer in Wisconsin, Humana Healthcare, is looking at cashing out.

Despite the rumors that he is going to sell to AETNA, Humana CEO Bruce Broussard, has been seen at the United Healthcare corporate HQ.  Broussard, can afford to travel to MN because he is fairly well compensated himself:

As President and Chief Executive Officer at HUMANA INCBruce D. Broussard made $10,155,401 in total compensation. Of this total $1,118,954 was received as a salary, $1,689,620 was received as a bonus,$1,689,338 was received in stock options, $5,062,498 was awarded as stock and $594,991 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2014 fiscal year.
Humana is a company that employs many Wisconsinites, and the question is, when they get bought up by someone else, what happens to their jobs?

While our Republican legislature is working on banning abortion, and our Governor is running around Disney World trying desperately to be President, thousands of Wisconsinites are left twisting in the wind.  

Not surprisingly, Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature, has a financial incentive to look the other way and not try and help these people in any way.    Not just from UnitedHealthcare, but also Humana and their PAC.

As we know, the bigger the companies get, and the less competition, the worse it will be for everyone.  Instead of running that MRI on your mom to catch the Cancer before it becomes stage 4, the United Healthcare/Humana merger will give them more power to buy politicians and give the CEO a raise.  

You can take an aspirin and a nap and your symptoms will go away.  When it comes down to your life or Hemsley's vacation home, well - it's been nice knowing you.  


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