Too easy on McGuire.

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Author: Schott, Donald

Letters

You served up a marshmallow in your coverage of UnitedHealth Group and man aged-care competition in your April 24 issue ("AMA: Near-monopolies abound"; "UnitedHealth sets off waves," p. 12).

It looks like Modern Healthcare is fawning over another chief executive officer in writing that UnitedHealth Group's William McGuire had made an "unprecedented call" to stop receiving options.

It's as if after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced its investigation of the stock-option grant program at UnitedHealth, the company's board formed an outside investigative committee and McGuire faces a shareholder lawsuit for backdating options to the low point of the stock price over the past 10 years, he announces, I will steal no more." He sure doesn't say he will re-price his current options.

He sounds like the CEO of Northwest Airlines, who publicly announced at about the same time that executives deserve huge pay increases because there are not enough of them, but there are too many pilots, so pilots' pay needs to be cut 20%.

I know you can't analyze every event as a watershed, but this one might qualify. The American Medical Association's analysis showing monopolization of the insurance market sure connects to the profits and executive compensation of the monopolies such as UnitedHealth. It is not news that UnitedHealth profits by cutting compensation to providers, reducing services to patients and pricing insurance so fewer people can afford it.

The news is that McGuire exploited his shareholders with schemes to hide profits to give himself and his cronies the highest pay in the land. Likewise, he shortchanged the shareholders while posturing to the employers, patients and politicians that UnitedHealth is improving healthcare and we should all buy its insurance. The Fords and GMs that bought UnitedHealth's "managed care" and complained about healthcare costing them $2,000 a car ought to give McGuire a call and ask for a loan. With $1.5 billion on top of the tens of millions he personally received from having his minions "managing" a large part of their healthcare, maybe he owes them a dollar or two in their time of need.

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By Donald Schott, Healthcare consultant Centerville, Ohio