UnitedHealth CEO Compensation Triples From 2009 to $9 Million – 3.9 Billion Profit for UnitedHealthCare

In a down turn year with a struggling economy these numbers belong right on Wall Street, wait a minutes that’s where they are traded for profit so the alliance and business plans appear to be one hand helping the other to big profits. I also read this week where one of their top executives, the President of Yellow Freight is now leaving and returning to United Healthcare. Yellow, in another life is where I spent a few years as a sales person.

Up and coming this week is a conference call and announcement from United with “their”plan on how

UnitedHealth Group to Release New Report Identifying Billions of Dollars in Potential Savings For States Facing Unprecedented Medicaid Expansion

“The report is the third in a series from the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, which seeks to offer policymakers “real-world” options on how to improve the quality of care while reducing costs.”

They have even gone to the extent of a website for posting their opinions and services as relates to healthcare reform. In 2009 the company spent 82.3 percent of premium money on medical expenses, but without seeing full accounting it appears we have to take their word for this. 85% in California has been the goal here and it never seems to be met. One big expense is lobbying whereby close to one million was spent during the 4th quarter of 2009. We still need the formulas to regulate and see how they are going about them, we regulate software for medical records, so why not the other side?

“Department of Algorithms – Do We Need One of These to Regulate Upcoming Laws?

Also in the news are a couple retail folks that are set up to be paid through pay for performance with identifying “potential” diabetes patients and there’s some privacy issues here too with the data in my opinion and where it will be shared.

UnitedHealthCare To Use Data Mining Algorithms On Claim Data To Look For Those At “Risk” of Developing Diabetes – Walgreens and the YMCA Benefit With Pay for Performance Dollars to Promote and Supply The Tools

Numbers like this still convince me that healthcare insurance needs to be a non profit business all over the US. BD

UnitedHealth Group Inc. CEO Stephen Hemsley received nearly $9 million in compensation for 2009, an increase of almost $6 million from the previous year.

Hemsley’s salary remained unchanged from a year ago, standing at $1.3 million. However, he received more than $5 million combined from stock-award and stock appreciation reward (SAR) compensation in 2009. He didn’t receive either SAR or stock-award pay in 2008.

In 2009, Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth awarded Hemsley nearly $2 million in non-equity plan compensation, up from $1.8 million in 2008. Non-equity compensation pay is tied to a company’s performance.

UnitedHealth reported a profit of $3.8 billion in 2009, up 27 percent from $2.98 billion in 2008. The health insurer's revenue rose to $87 billion, up from $81 billion in the previous year.