Health Care CEOs Hauled In $4 Billion Last Year As Inflation Pinched Workers, Analysis Shows

Not only has the healthcare industry become a safe haven for jittery equity investors in 2022, inflation and interest rates have been higher this year. He also ensured a steady flow of wealth to his top executives, who have collectively earned billions of dollars during a difficult time for the economy.

By almost every measure, 2022 has been a bad year for the stock market. But stocks of medical companies fell far less than stocks of other companies, as the number of medical services received and the number of prescriptions written approached pre-pandemic standards.

As a result, the CEOs of more than 300 publicly traded healthcare companies earned $4 billion in 2022, according to a STAT analysis of financial filings. This amount could buy Costco membership for more than 66 million people which is equivalent to the entire economic output of Sierra Leone.

This CEO's revenue is down 11% from $4.5 billion reported in 2021. But the big paydays show that all the health pits, little known about Covid-19 vaccines and bone transplants to cover the country's poor, have continued to work. Leaders with large sums of money, although in general more and more people were trying to pay for food, housing and, of course, medical care.

said John McDonough, a professor of health policy at Harvard University, who has researched nearly every health care issue. Four years decades "This is the bitter fruit we reap by telling the healthcare industry to act like business."

No CEO has earned more than Stefan Bancel of Moderna, who received nearly $400 million from governments around the world that rushed to buy the biotech company's Covid-19 vaccine. Bansel donates most of his income to charity. The 10 highest-paid CEOs (the list also includes the heads of Thermo Fisher and McKesson) earned $1.4 billion, or about a third of the total of those surveyed. This amount is roughly equal to what the National Institutes of Health spends each year on drug abuse and addiction research.

The irony of healthcare payments, experts say, is that the industry is crediting itself for trying to find ways to cut costs. But health care still accounts for more than 18% of the US economy, just as it did before the pandemic.

"The incentive for companies is not to cut system costs," McDonough said.

Like last year, STAT analyzed executive compensation listed in annual proxies for more than 300 companies in all healthcare sectors: drug and biotechnology manufacturers, health insurers, hospitals, third-party service providers, medical device companies, Medtech companies, suppliers and others. that. . The study focused on companies valued at least $1 billion in March, according to data from financial database provider AlphaSense.

The data provides detailed insight into how top executives are motivated, such as how equity still makes up the bulk of their compensation and how this leads to a large pay gap between senior and lower-level employees. Nurses and assistants. About Home and Others The study also highlights cattle in each sector, such as biopharmaceutical CEOs who earned more than $90 million, all of which came from so-called "management fees."

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Begins

Fear of Inflation. Bloomberg Watch 10/27/2022