By Ray Rogers

COMMENTARY: Ray Rogers is a pioneering labor strategist & organizer, and founder of CorporateCampaign.org.

CVS Health Corporation (CVS), headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is the world's largest healthcare company. It owns CVS Pharmacy, a retail pharmacy chain; CVS Caremark, a pharmacy benefits manager; Aetna, a health insurance provider, and many other brands.

CVS and its subsidiaries have been successfully sued many times by Federal and State governments for Medicare and Medicaid fraud as well as for reckless opioid violations; and its nationwide consumer ratings and reviews range from negative to downright horrible.

Good Jobs First Violations Tracker, headed by investigative business journalist Phil Mattera, documents $6,802,201,927 in government penalties against CVS Healthcare and its subsidiaries since 2000. These penalties are for healthcare-related offenses such as off-label or unapproved promotion of medical products ($5,686,934,290), government-contracting-related offenses ($587,904,656), consumer-protection-related offenses ($304,765,859), employment-related offenses ($116,938,423) and competition-related offenses ($67,150,000).

A press release issued by the New York Attorney General's office on June 9, 2023 announced billions of dollars in settlements with drug makers and pharmacies including CVS. “No amount of money will bring back the lives lost to opioids, but these funds will help heal New York,” Attorney General Leticia James said. “For years, Teva, CVS, and Walgreens peddled deadly opioids and today’s historic agreements hold these companies accountable for their role in this public health crisis.”

Unsurprisingly, CVS Caremark does not have the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accredited Seal that signifies a business is reputable, as well as honest and ethical. Instead, its BBB Rating and Accreditation is a revealing F! It's the same for CVS Pharmacy.  A CVS Caremark review posted in June on Consumer Affairs’ website stated, "This is the most incompetent organization I've ever dealt with. They have one job, dispense medication, and they cannot even do that correctly."

CustomerServiceScoreboard.com this year rated Aetna as "terrible" or among the very worst in a list of 1,019 companies that provide customer service and support.

Yet CVS/Aetna has been chosen by a handful of NYC labor "leaders" and a lying mayor to privatize healthcare for 250,000 NYC public employees which will result in a major economic burden on their families. This privatization scheme contradicts decades of hard-fought benefit gains made by public employee unions to protect members and their families from rising healthcare costs and to protect public employee jobs from being outsourced to private profit-driven companies.

As described in a June 26, 2023 Work-Bites article, Sonia Agron, a retired EMT for the City of New York, stood in a downpour outside City Hall talking about how she and her husband — a retiree from the NYPD — are both “very sick” with 911-related illnesses and feeling very betrayed by all those trying to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare health benefits and force them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage program run by Aetna.

“We didn't go into this job because of the high pay,” Agron said. “We went into it for what we were promised when we retired — and this mayor has lied to us. Many of us voted for him because we wanted our rights to be protected, and he turned his back on us.”

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and FDNY EMS Retirees, at a press conference outside City hall stated, “The Daily News reported that our former union leader, DC 37’s Henry Garrido, threatened to withdraw support and donations to any elected official who supported our legislation [Intro. 1099 — new legislation aimed at preventing Mayor Eric Adams and the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee from privatizing retiree healthcare.] Not because of the merits of the bill — but because our unions made a deal with the devil — and that was to trade away our Medicare benefits for their own enrichment."

While many hardworking, courageous frontliners and their families will be harmed by this preposterous profit-driven privatization scheme, others like CVS President/CEO Karen Lynch, CVS Executive VP/CFO Shawn Guertin and every member of CVS' board, like other large stockholders, will be raking in lavish monetary benefits.

The CVS deal is certainly not being made because those running CVS are considered to be so competent in dispensing state-of-the-art healthcare services. Besides the plethora of horrible reviews and allegations directed at CVS Healthcare Corporation and its subsidiaries — including running up patient costs with unnecessary tests; over-billing and charging patients for more care than they receive; physician allegations of unsanitary and unsafe conditions and overcrowding in their medical facilities; anesthesiology errors; and inadequate monitoring of ICU patients — its exorbitantly paid CEO and board members are carrying a lot of other baggage they would like to remain hidden. 

CEO Lynch, the former president of Aetna, also served as president of Magellan Health Services, a healthcare management company, and was an executive at Cigna Corporation, a global health insurance company, both of which have a history rife with complaints and horrible reviews now and during her tenure. CVS board members also oversee and are an integral part of other companies which lack a moral compass. 

Turning over public employees' healthcare to scofflaw CVS/Aetna will lead to greater profits for CVS and will increase already exorbitant executive compensation packages and the value of their large shareholdings. In 2021 and 2022, Ms. Lynch's compensation from CVS totaled $41,705,467. Shawn Guertin received $28,969,943.

Ms. Lynch's 1,049,326 shares of CVS stock on June 29, 2023 were valued at $71,501,073. 

If Ms. Lynch was to suddenly retire or is terminated without cause, she will receive compensation ranging from $33,849,080 to $56,794,269. And if she were to suddenly pass away, her heirs would receive a death benefit of $45,515,443.

CVS board members, many of whom rake in substantial sums from positions at other companies received compensation from CVS in 2022 ranging from $335,000 to $610,000. 

On June 29, 2023, a share of CVS stock cost $68.14. The more that public employee healthcare plans can be privatized, the greater the corporate profits will be for CVS. Greater profits will lead to higher CVS stock value and consequently greater compensation and benefits for executives, board members and other large shareholders at the expense of the big losers — hundreds of thousands of city retirees.

Outgoing New York City Council Member Charles Barron has introduced legislation, Intro. 1099, to safeguard retiree healthcare at the local level, while Assembly Member Ken Zebrowski has introduced similar legislation to protect retiree healthcare at the state level. Voters and political leaders who believe in justice and protecting our city retirees and public employee jobs everywhere must support passage of this city and state legislation. 

Union members and healthcare advocates concerned about the proliferation of behemoth profit-driven companies privatizing public employees' healthcare and other public services should strongly consider making CVS Healthcare/Aetna the poster child for a national campaign to put an abrupt end to these shenanigans!