Reply #13: Not covering dental basically says your teeth/mouth are not [View All]

[slipslidingaway]

part of your body :shrug:

Here's an article about the compensation...

UnitedHealth's Options Scandal Shows Familiar Symptoms
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701467.html


"Consider the case of William McGuire, who over the past 15 years has transformed UnitedHealth from a struggling regional insurer in Minnesota into the second-largest health insurer in the country, largely through acquisitions of companies like Mid Atlantic Medical Services of Rockville. One in six Americans is a UnitedHealth customer. Under McGuire's leadership, the company's market value has risen to $60 billion. During that same period, he amassed stock options more valuable than those of any chief executive in history: $1.5 billion.

Even by today's standards, McGuire's compensation has been obscene. The big change came in 1999, when, in negotiations over a new contract, he demanded a pay package that would give him 2 percent of UnitedHealth shares. Significantly, McGuire insisted that he alone get to decide the timing of those options. And he wrote in a provision that he could be fired only upon a felony conviction, or failure to rectify a serious problem after repeated notices from the board.

The board of directors that agreed to such a lavish, one-sided contract included several luminaries: Tom Kean, the former governor of New Jersey and later chairman of the 9/11 commission; James Johnson, the former chief executive of Fannie Mae who created the culture that led to that company's costly accounting scandal; Gail Wilensky, a respected health-policy expert who once ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs; and former vice president Walter Mondale..."