Top Execs At “Big Five’’ Health Insurers Each Pull In Millions

Health care reform, new Wall Street regulations and outrage over large pay packages are likely to put pressure on compensation for health insurance executives. But it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. The highest-paid executive at each of the “Big Five’’ health insurers – UnitedHealth Group, Aetna Inc., WellPoint Inc., Humana Inc. and Cigna Corp. – made more than $8 million in 2012, according to filings this spring with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The CEO of EmblemHealth Inc., a nonprofit that owns ConnectiCare, also had total compensation at that level in 2011, the last year for which information is available.

Cancer death rates

Cancer Deaths: Gap Persists Among Blacks, Whites

When Ulysses B. Hammond was diagnosed with prostate cancer, his first thought was that he could wait to deal with it. After all, the doctor said it would spread slowly. That reaction is typical for men – especially African Americans like Hammond — and it plays a role in explaining why they have the highest cancer death rate in the United States and in Connecticut. “It’s not deemed very macho to actually admit or discuss physical frailties,” said Hammond, chair of the board at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London. The death rate for African American men and women nationally – 207.7 per 100,000 people – is more than 20 percent higher than the rate for whites, according to 2009 data, the latest from the National Cancer Institute.