Sick for Profit: Stephen Hemsley's Millions Come From Your Health
Posted on August 6th, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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Meet Stephen Hemsley
. He's the CEO of UnitedHealth. In 2007, he earned $13.2 million dollars. His unexercised stock options total three-quarters of a billion dollars. That's right - billion.
Where does he get all that money? He gets it from you. Your health, to be exact. Every time UnitedHealth denies one of their customers a treatment, that's more money in Hemsley's pocket. Every time UnitedHealth skimps on care, or delays treatments, more money for Hemsley. Hemsley is rich because he keeps you sick, that's just the way it works.
It's not just numbers, not just dollars and cents. Real people suffer so Hemsley can own his $6 million house. Take a look at some of those stories:
Now that's sick. Your health means nothing to these people. Insurance companies only see you as bank accounts from which they can squeeze more cash.
There will be more in this series, called Sick for Profit from Brave New Films. Stay tuned. In the meantime, think about how the health care system works in this country. Anyone who opposes a public health insurance option - or reform in general - wants to keep the system in the hands of people like Hemsley, so he can keep raking in the cash.
When the citizens who are manipulated by right wing radio and television are told to scream, disrupt, and chant incendiary talking points….
… they are doing so in denfense of Stephen Hemsley's bloated pockets.
This is rediculous! (I saw the new documentary on msnbc ( or maybe cnn) I think the doc's producers name was Green) What brought it to the fore front for me is the fact that UHC has a AARP reccomended supplement ins. for Medicare!!! Does not this anger ANYONE???????? No wonder we are in such trouble.. Between the insurance companies and the drug companies we are being screwed! Hemsley is just another Bernie Madoff!!!!
These people must go on Trial this is obscene, and just like Bernie Madoff, they must go to jail. With Madoff it was money, here it is LIFE. Not acceptable.
The entire system of health care in the United States is just one big ponzi scheme. The people heading this ponzi scheme are lousy college students, attending some of the worst colleges in the United States. These men are nothing more than party boys, who are now partying off of your very life. The bottom line: don't get sick as long as you live in the United States. "Life unworthy of Life" — that's the motto of these party boys or should I call the neo-Nazis?
This is absolutely ridculous! Of course Hemsley's salary is outrageous and everyone SHOULD be outraged. But your argument has absolutely NOTHING to do with reality:
"Every time UnitedHealth denies one of their customers a treatment, that's more money in Hemsley's pocket. Every time UnitedHealth skimps on care, or delays treatments, more money for Hemsley. Hemsley is rich because he keeps you sick, that's just the way it works."
What an emotional bunch of crock! You are obviously not interested at all in any kind of meaningful dialogue on health care reform, all you want to do is whip the masses into a frenzy of anger so you can manipulate them. Wow, you are totally ignorant of the facts, history and economics: "Quality Affordable Healthcare we all can count on." Provided by the GOVERNMENT? C'mon, since when did the NATIONAL GOVERNMENT EVER succeed in producing a single program like that? Medicare or Medicaid? Social Security, Uh. . . no . . . uh (yeah all of those programs are bankrupt). Well, it hasn't ANYWHERE - Not in Canada, Not in France, Not in England, not in Australia . . . NEVER, ANYWHERE. 48 million Americans without insurance? Give me a break, virtually everyone now acknowledges that statistic is not accurate - yet OBama continues to cite it as if it is true - yet everyone now knows that is not accurate!! Open your eyes and at least address the issues honestly. Give up the manipulation and the lies! This scam is NOT the answer.
Health reform gives you a choice. You don't have to choose government insurance if you don't want it.
Hey Steve Anderson,
You say that France's health programs are bankrupt? Please post a link to validate your claim. France has the best healthcare system in the world. We are on the bottom rung. All the countries you mentioned have better healthcare than we do. 18,000 people die yearly because of no coverage. We have the highest rate of infant mortality of any industrialized nation. Yet we are the richest. I heard Bill Kristol, a regular on Fox News and one of the architects of the Iraq war say that the VA is the best run healthcare in the U.S. He is very much a conservative. But he didn't think that regular citizens deserved that healthcare because we didn't serve our country.
The health insurance industry is all about money. I watched an interview with a woman who used to work for one of the big insurance agencies, and she said they got bonuses for denying people's claims. Because she had a conscience a good heart and an active brain stem, she quit.
Steve,
You've got it all wrong. We don't need anyone to whip us up into a frenzy of antipathy for the insurance companies. They do it on their own.
I've been waiting two months to be paid by United Healthcare on a claim for medically necessary surgery that UHC PREAPPROVED. Every time I speak with someone from UHC, they give me a runaround, new excuses, rolling delays, and other unconscionable nonsense. Meanwhile, since I prepaid the surgeon for his services, I am out five figures–over $10,000, while I wait, and wait, and wait, seemingly with no end in sight.
This is the sort of callous disregard for customers that would NEVER go over in another industry where customers had a choice.
It's Wall Street, sub-prime mortgages, big oil and Credit Card companies all over again except with deadly consequences. This is why President Obama wanted to get rid of lobbyists. The Insurance industry spends 1.4 million per day to ensure that we do not get Health Reform. Hemsley and Rick Scott should have been in prison years ago. It's a failure of our government to protect it's citizens by jailing real criminals. This failure happens because too many of our lawmakers are being paid by these crooks.
I've had the worst possible experience with United Health Care, even though I pay 1,500 a month in premiums for my family (3/4ths paid by my company, the rest by me and my husband). I have to call multiple times to demand UHC pay my dr. bills after almost every claim. I had to call over 20 times (no exaggeration, I have it documented) and write my attorney general before they finally agreed to pay for the delivery of my child. UNBELIEVABLE! They wanted to pay 10% of the cost by finding loopholes and passing me from person to person who said "I see that UHC is supposed to pay this, not sure why it's not being paid, but there is nothing I can do, you have to call so and so"… They finally paid the bill once the attorney general got involved and sent them a WTF letter. I'm absolutely appalled by this unethical scamming company. I am an average, healthy, working mother. My company has gotten so many complaints about UHC they just switched the whole company (500 employees) to Blue Cross. Please please Obama… don't give up. Reform is vital. The current system is a disgrace.
And, Sadly, Delta Air Lines is moving the former Northwest employees to the United Health Care nightmare. We must send these people to prison.
I am fed up of the right wing of our government, but what I am the most fed up with is the dems, whom by the way we handed a 60 seat majority, the ability to pass all the things they had been prommissing us for years, and now, now when we finaly have the chance to fix health care, Max Baucus, who by the way took more money from ins lobby than any other member of congress folds on the public option, he and the so called blue dogs make me sick. We went to the polls in november and handed them a public mandate, they gave us a platform, ran on it, and they are once again breaking faith with the American public. How can they do this, while we have the most caring, smart, and dedicated President and a 60 seat majority, it won't be defeat becaus of the republicans, or even the insurance industy, it will because of dems in congress caving to their backers, and running for the next election.
Hey guys, I don't mean to say I told you so, BUUUUUT…
cpusa.org, we've been fighting this sort of travesty since before it was a "problem."
Isn't it time you joined the party?
This ceo of united health makes me sick. There are no words that can be printed to describe what I feel for this sob. Their sister company ….pacific care nearly killed my wife because they denied a "sleep test"….two trips to the emergeny room…heart and respirtory doctors….finally when she went on medicare….the sleep test was approved….by then some damage was done to her heart…..f everyone of the for profit ceo greedy jerks….I am ready for a single payer goverment option.
My health insurer is United Health and, every year the premium goes up double digits. I just got a letter that they are raising my premium by 15%. I don't know how much longer that I can keep paying these sky high rates. Where can I get a 15% return on my money? Do you hear me, Hemsley? I am tired of paying for your 6 million dollar house.
After my daughter's brain surgery - United NO Health Care dropped my children from their books. After 2 months of fighting and involving the Attorney General, we won. A United NO Health Care employee told me, "we are a business - not a service." They're EVIL people.