Executive compensation continues to rise—and so do healthcare costs

Once again, for-profit hospital executive compensation numbers are out, and once again, people are outraged.

Even Congress is getting frustrated, as the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing in April questioning hospital CEOs on their spending and growing healthcare costs. People in the US owe a collective $220 billion in medical debt, according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, and healthcare costs are expected to rise 9% this year, according to a Business Group on Health survey.

While executives during the hearing blamed rising premiums and said consolidation could help, nurses on the ground pushed back.

“It is simply outrageous and immoral that healthcare CEOs take home multimillion-dollar compensation packages as we workers and patients witness skyrocketing healthcare costs and face chronic short-staffing that undermines patient care in our hospitals,” Karena Jimenez Pulido, chief nurse representative with National Nurses United at HCA Florida Largo Hospital, told us via email.

Salary breakdown. When it comes to providers, it’s not surprising that for-profit CEOs are paid the most.

Here are the top for-profit salaries from 2025, according to federal SEC documents:

• Tenet Healthcare CEO Saum Sutaria: $43,108,969
• HCA Healthcare CEO Sam Hazen: $26,456,606
• Universal Health Services President and CEO Marc Miller: $16,148,937
• Community Health Systems CEO Kevin Hammons (became permanent CEO on Oct. 1, 2025): $4,772,869

In some cases, CEOs at some of the biggest nonprofit health systems are making similar salaries. Here are the top total nonprofit CEO compensation figures from 2024, the most recent information available, per 990 filings:

• Kaiser Permanente CEO Gregory Adams: $12,976,050
• Ascension CEO Joseph Impicciche: $12,281,151
• Advocate Health CEO Gene Woods: $25,781,275

For comparison, non-executive healthcare workers make significantly less. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that registered nurses’ median annual salary was $93,600 in 2024, and physicians and surgeons’ median pay was $239,200. Some hospital staff, like janitors and cafeteria workers, still make minimum wage.

“[Hospitals] blame insurers and drug companies. Democrats blame Republicans. Republicans blame Democrats. Insurers blame hospitals and drug companies. Drug companies blame [pharmacy benefit managers] and hospitals,” Committee Chairman Jason Smith said during the hearing.

In a testimony to the Ways and Means Committee, Hazen said healthcare is “too expensive for too many people.”

“Whether it is the price of a prescription, the growing weight of insurance premiums, or the burden of an unanticipated emergency room bill, the financial pressures associated with healthcare affect nearly every American household,” he said. “These challenges are real, and they demand the urgent attention of everyone in healthcare.”

The other for-profit hospitals didn’t respond to a request for comment by publication.

Similar wage patterns exist across the industry, like with health plans. Becker’s reported last month that UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley made $60,950,571 in 2025, which is 748x higher than the average staffer at the company.

What’s being done about it? Some states have tried—but so far failed—to pass laws limiting executive compensation. Vermont, for example, proposed a bill that would limit hospital executive and clinical leadership compensation to 10x the salaries of the lowest-paid, patient-facing employees. Though it never moved forward.

North Carolina and California are also considering similar legislation.

The Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) also tried to limit executive pay in 2024, according to the Minnesota Reformer. Its movement, called the “Healing Greed Agenda,” didn’t make any progress in the state Legislature either.

So now, there’s seemingly no end in sight for lower exec salaries, or for less frustration within the industry.

“Hospital executives think they run the show. They have the money to pay more than 60 lobbyists to ensure the system stays exactly like it is. But we are here today to speak with one voice and demand change,” Chris Rubesch, a registered nurse at Essentia-Duluth and MNA president, said in a release on the union’s agenda in 2024.