The Horrible Life After Being a Hospital CEO

Some of you get very ugly when discussing the salaries of hospital CEOs. I understand but you have to understand that life is miserable after they leave. For one, those golden parachutes they receive are not going to buy million dollar yachts anymore. Well, maybe they can but not more than one. Secondly, some are stuck being consultants to those place they just left:

For some hospital chains and health insurers, CEO departures are anything but a clean break. Employment agreements outline long, expensive goodbyes that compensation experts say may be designed in part to enforce noncompete agreements.

Investor-owned companies like HCA Healthcare and health insurer Anthem have contracts in place with current and recently departed CEOs outlining the terms of paid consulting gigs they step into once their tenures as the top executive end. The contracts ensure leadership will continue to be paid handsomely for scaled-back workloads.

Even though Joseph Swedish retired from Anthem’s top spot in November 2017, the company pays him $4.5 million per year plus benefits to serve as a consultant and senior adviser to the CEO, currently Gail Boudreaux. The contract, which runs until May 2020, doesn’t spell out specific time commitments, but says he’ll perform duties assigned to him by the CEO “from time to time.” Anthem didn’t respond to requests for an explanation about the agreement.

See what I mean? It is NOT easy to have a scaled-back workload an get paid $4.5 million per year (see the linked article above for more examples). You try doing duties assigned to you by the new CEO “from time to time”. C’mom people, give these people, and the hospital systems, a break. Life is tough.