Opinion
Solution for health plan CEOs' outrageous pay: Let doctors decide the salaries
LETTER — Posted Aug. 11, 2008
Regarding "What's in their wallets? Health plan executives bring home the bucks" (Article, June 23/30): After reading your recent article outlining the obscene compensation given to health plan CEOs, I wonder how often they stay up all night as we do, caring for patients, covering the emergency department, covering trauma, making life-and-death decisions, performing life-and-death surgery, or anything else remotely related to the patient's well-being.
After suffering through years of seeing our compensation cut to fund health plan takeovers, outrageous executive salaries and shareholder dividends, I would propose a simple formula for determining executive compensation. A board of actual hardworking doctors would decide on the CEO compensation.
When the bill is submitted for a compensation package of $25 million, the first thing we would do, no matter what the claim, is to send a letter saying this exceeds usual and customary charges.
After review, we would then ultimately allow possibly $1 million. But, oh, by the way, we only pay 80% of that because the rest is your co-pay. Next, although the finances are totally unrelated, we cut it another 10% to reflect the recent Medicare reduction. The resulting $720,000 would still be outrageous, but we might allow compensation of three or four times what a hardworking physician is able to make working 100 hours a week and actually helping people.
Thomas J. Gibson, MD, Winchester, Va.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/08/11/edlt0811.htm.
