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UnitedHealth CEO Forced to Take $66 Million in Earnings Thanks to Obamacare

© yahyaikiz / Dollar Photo Club

Minnetonka, MN (Just Laugh) – It’s no secret today across the healthcare industry that the so-called Affordable Care Act has been nothing but trouble, but few have been hit harder by President Obama’s socialist-inspired legislation than the very leaders of the insurance corporations enlisted to do the unsustainable task of providing quality health insurance to Americans without any of the protections that they once enjoyed to spare them from the less profitable consumers among us.

Take Stephen J. Hemsley, for example – the CEO of UnitedHealth Group since 2006 which is currently the largest provider of health insurance in the United States. With profits from 2014 nearing $6 billion on $130 billion of revenue, one might think that the company is doing quite well, however taking home a meager $66 million for his efforts in 2014, Mr. Hemsley’s bank account might beg to differ on the proper definition of success for the man who only a few years prior was named by Forbes as the highest paid CEO in the country.

What proponents of Obamacare fail to realize when they demand universal access to lifesaving health resources is that every penny spent on nurses and MRIs is one penny less that can be allocated for the CEOs that make America’s insurance system the most profitable in the world today, and with more consumers than ever relying on an already taxed system, it’s become painfully clear to CEOs like Hemsley that the $102 million he earned in 2010 – a figure which represented 2,063 times the average household income of earners in America during that time – might very well be a thing of the past.

“As much as it pains me to say this,” spoke Hemsley while sipping on a Pumpkin Spice Latte handcrafted by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz himself and served in the hollowed out skull of the endangered Roloway Monkey from the jungles of Ghana on the coast of West Africa, “we really can’t subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.”

“In these days of unsurety, we need to focus first on stabilizing executive compensation so that we can then direct our efforts on providing coverage across the country, but unlike some political forces would like to see it, things simply can’t be the other way around. Frankly, I wish they could, but ask yourself – could you sustain a 35% pay cut that you rely on to keep your stable of prize-winning Arabian fighting horses fed? Nobody could.”

Despite corporations like UnitedHealth Group witnessing record growth over the last five years while costs throughout the healthcare industry have surged, it’s important for us to remember that when CEOs like Stephen Hemsley with a net worth approaching $500 million suffer, all of America suffers along with them.

About Scott Sevener (580 Posts since 2001)
The Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Just Laugh, Scott writes about the random things in life that amuse him - from the miracle of childbirth to the bologna sandwich he just ate for breakfast. He currently resides in Tampa, FL with a girl, a baby, and a dog that never shuts the hell up.