Mike Reddy for STAT
Dear Readers,
For the past several months, a team of reporters, editors, and data specialists at STAT sought to document the fortunes of the top executives at our nation's biggest health care companies.
The results, published in a series of six stories today, are stunning: CEOs of roughly 300 companies collectively took home $4.5 billion last year. That is seven times what the CDC had to spend on managing infectious diseases in 2021, a year in which America approached 1 million deaths due to Covid-19.
STAT's special report is the most comprehensive examination of its kind. Companies report executive pay prominently in SEC filings, but those filings don't actually give accurate representations of what someone made. So our team combed through hundreds of financial filings to get a fuller picture of compensation — including salaries, bonuses, perks, and the actual realized gains of executives’ stock awards and options.
We have published a story on our top-line findings as well as a piece that documents the chasm between executives at health care companies and employees who work on the frontlines.
We go even deeper in four sector-by-sector stories that are available only to our STAT+ readers:
I hope you'll consider signing up for a free trial of STAT+ to read these stories, and not miss out on many of our best investigative, news, and analytical stories, while also supporting our mission to produce the most essential journalism you'll get anywhere on health, medicine, and science. We offer special annual rates for groups, and contact us to learn more about discounts for readers in academia and government.
Subscribe to STAT+
Let me share some other recent subscriber-only stories that you may have missed:
We’ve just launched our newest free newsletter, Health Care Inc., anchored by reporter Bob Herman. Every Monday, Bob and Tara Bannow, two of the best-sourced reporters on the business of health care, will deliver fresh reporting on everything from surprise medical bills to hospitals’ efforts to prop up medical schools to health insurance “micro-groups.” Sign up for the newsletter here.
I also hope you'll sign up for our upcoming virtual events:
- On Wednesday, with Congress barreling toward drug pricing reform, we’ll sit down with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, for his take.
- And on July 26, we’ll have a virtual one-on-one with Adm. Rachel L. Levine, the first transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate who is working to protect the rights of trans people as some states are restricting access to gender-affirming care.
Thank you for reading STAT. As always, feel free to shoot me an email with your concerns, compliments, or other feedback. I’m at rick.berke@statnews.com and @rickberke on Twitter.
All the best,
Richard L. Berke
Co-founder & Executive Editor
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