John R. Boehm
HCSC EXECS SEE BIG RAISES: Top brass at Blue Cross of Illinois parent company got big raises last year, as health insurers emerged largely unscathed from the economic fallout of a pandemic that hammered other segments of the health care industry.
Maurice Smith, who took the helm last June, got a 63 percent boost to $5.9 million, while longtime board Chairman Milton Carroll s pay jumped 81 percent to $8.9 million. Carroll, an energy industry executive who has served as HCSC s board chairman since 2002, collected far more than his counterparts at comparable publicly traded health insurers last year. I don t see chairmen of the board for very large public companies making anywhere near that amount of money, says Mark Reilly, managing director of the Overture Alliance, a Chicago-based executive compensation consultancy. READ MORE.
Last April, Dr Clarence Kelley Sr, 64, a pastor in Chicago’s West Side, contracted Covid-19. The disease nearly claimed his life, forcing him into the hospital for almost two weeks and on a breathing machine. “I was afraid that I would never ever see my wife again … it was devastating to me. I would not wish this on anyone,” Kelley told the Guardian. Now, out on the other side of this near-death experience, Kelley wants the Covid-19 vaccine. And.
By Naomi Craine December 21, 2020
CHICAGO After nearly two weeks on strike, 700 members of Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois ratified a contract with Infinity Healthcare Management that includes an immediate raise of at least $1 an hour. The strike involved certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, kitchen workers and others at 11 nursing homes in Chicago and the region.
“The main issue is the short staffing. We also need a pay raise,” Donna Hundley, a striker at the Momence Meadows Nursing Center, an hour south of here, told
Militant correspondents on the picket line Nov. 28. “We come to work every day and risk our health.” Strikers demanded additional protective gear and hazard pay. Like nursing homes across the country, most of Infinity’s facilities have had COVID-19 outbreaks.