Dive Brief:
- Healthcare CEOs, who are among the top-paid in the country, could feel heat from a SEC rule requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose the ratio of CEO-to-median-employee pay.
- The rule, part of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law of 2010, is scheduled to go into effect in 2017.
- The AFL-CIO claims the most highly compensated healthcare CEOs make more than 1,000 times what the median U.S. worker makes in a year.
Dive Insight:
Whether this will result in any real change is a matter of considerable debate. The rise of CEO salaries in recent years is hardly news, and the height of outrage over the still-ongoing escalation may have passed. Still, it's hard not to wonder why it's taking so long to implement this seemingly straightforward provision of Dodd-Frank.
Healthcare CEOs are among the best-paid in the country, Modern Healthcare notes. The publication's compensation analysis earlier this year found that Dr. Leonard Schleifer, the CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, was top among healthcare CEOs with $42 million in total compensation last year. That's 1,162 times what the AFL-CIO says is average pay for rank-and-file workers in the U.S.