Mass. Blue Cross will give back customers $4.2M CEO severance Morning.

Killingsworth will not be required to give back any of the severance, the disclosure of which earlier this year came as Gov. and other country officials were outlining proposals to get ahead of the trim direction pay plan to rein in the soaring costs of premiums. Coakley called the outcome to plugola the money "appropriate" and said she had received assurances that the net would be paid from and and private limited company reserves, and not solely passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums or other charges. "It wouldn't do anyone any superb to avoid off one end of the blanket and mend it on to the other end," said Coakley.

"Blue Cross has assured us that it will not be passed on to customers and it will come out of advance that normally goes into reserves." Coakley said the $4.2 million represented only the negotiated severance and did not take in deferred compensation that by some estimates could cause the complete number paid to Killingsworth following his departure to $8 million to $11 million.

The study also ascertained that CEOs of other serious well-being care organizations in Massachusetts had equivalent severance and compensation provisions, Coakley said, and she would aspire to have all well-disposed organizations in the state publicly divulge severance terms for their top-notch executives. A public noise indirectly led to a separate propose by Blue Cross Blue Shield, a not-for-profit firm, to check salaries paid to plank members, a procedure that had also been sharply criticized by Coakley and others. Under the unity announced Wednesday, Blue Cross promised to further its recruitment and lineage plans for uppermost executives and strengthen its board's skill to review the chief executive's performance. Coakley also prominent that the compensation and severance terms for stream CEO Andrew Dreyfus were far more unexcessive than the ones enjoyed by Killingsworth.

The steadfastness to purposely rebate $4.26 million to ratepayers was made as "a signal of satisfactory faith to our customers and the community," the insurer said in a statement. Blue Cross said the credits would appear on invoices sent to singular and team policyholders in the fourth quarter, but neither the visitor nor the attorney blanket could put forward any type of average notable that a customer might receive. The attorney hybrid said the investigation by her room determined that under the terms of a contract Killingsworth signed with Blue Cross in 2005, the throng was legally required to gratify severance terms unless his departure was the conclusion of "intentional misconduct.

" The payment, "exorbitant" in Coakley's view, was required even if the body predetermined that Killingsworth's completion in the vocation was unsatisfactory. Killingsworth stepped down weeks after Blue Cross announced a $149 million annual loss, but a following spokesman said at the space he was not studied to leave. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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