Elizabeth Edwards: President of United Health Care Made Almost $3 Billion a Few Years Ago
Check out the clip below of Elizabeth Edwards on the Daily Show. Start it around the 3:00 mark. She is a policy fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she works on health care reform. In the clip, she says that a few years ago, the president of United Health Care earned so much money, that it worked out to 1 out of every 700 dollars spent in the country on health care. The audience gasped.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M – Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Edwards | ||||
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So I turned to my trusty Google, and found that in 2005, health care expenditures in the US were “almost” $2 trillion. So if the president of United Health Care pulled down 1/7ooth of that, he earned about $2.9 billion. Really?
Presumably Mrs. Edwards can come up with some subset of health care expenditures to make her claim accurate. But you know, I’m not sure how. I tried googling “elizabeth edwards president united health care” thinking that somebody would have justified / blew up her absurd claim. This site deals with it, and says “Indeed…” and goes on to point out that some CEOs made upwards of $11 million each.
Soooo, do these writers think that total health care expenditures in any recent year were only $11 million x 700 = $7.7 billion? Off the top of my head, that sounds more like what Americans spend on over the counter medicines, not “health care” in general.
It seems like the policy fellows at Center for American Progress need a remedial course in arithmetic.
