Ah, now we're playing hardball! Maybe when Americans start to see how much money these guys are making, it'll get a rise out of them. Way to go, Jay:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate Democrat asked the top 15 health insurers to explain what portion of premiums go to profits versus patient care, putting further pressure on the companies to explain their business practices as Congress considers sweeping health reform legislation.

In letters to the companies on Friday, Sen. John Rockefeller also asked for information about how insurers disclose financial practices to customers.

Earlier this week, senior Democrats on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee asked dozens of health insurers for details about executive compensation and other practices.

"Too often consumers are not getting a fair deal for what they pay, they are not getting the protections they deserve, and the insurance companies are awash in profit," Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a statement.

The letters were sent to companies including UnitedHealth Group, Wellpoint and Aetna, the committee said.

Health insurers have come under attack amid a contentious debate about how to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system to cover the currently uninsured and cut costs. A key issue is whether the government should offer its own health insurance option to provide competition for the private companies.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), an industry group, said insurers provide detailed financial information to federal and state regulators. Health plans rank 35th among Fortune magazine's profitability rankings with an average profit margin of 2.2 percent, AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said.

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Well isn't this special? CEO Perks Rise As Pay Falls:

NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. companies remain generous with the perks they give to CEOs, including some that are unfathomable to the average American worker: chauffeured cars, bodyguards, club memberships and free travel in company jets.

The median value of these and similar perks rose nearly 7 percent in 2008, according to an Associated Press analysis of regulatory filings from 309 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500. The increase came even as overall CEO compensation fell 7 percent to $7.6 million.

You can read the rest of the article here.

The rich, they are different from you and me:

The furor over bonuses for some employees at AIG International Group has focused public attention on the sizable checks employees received at firms that were bailed out by the federal government or received some taxpayer support. Less noticed, though, are the rich retirement benefits. That's partly because firms only recently began to disclose the value of executive retirement benefits in their annual proxy statements, which are filed this time of year ahead of yearly shareholder meetings.

Equilar, a California compensation consulting company, said the average additional value in 2008 to a chief executive's retirement plan was $1.23 million, based on its review of those firms that have filed proxy statements. In 2007, the average was $1.38 million.

These executives continue to accumulate enormous benefits while fewer rank-and-file workers have guaranteed retirement benefits. Just one-third of workers in mid- to large-size companies were in so-called defined benefit plans in 2007, down from 52 percent in 1995, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Some compensation specialists say the executives' sums are far more than what any individual needs for retirement.

"Retirement packages are supposed to help you if you're unable to save for retirement. I don't believe any of these guys could have spent all the cash they've earned in their careers as CEOs," said Paul Hodgson, senior researcher at the Corporate Library in Portland, Maine, which researches executive compensation and corporate governance issues for shareholders and insurers.

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On The Situation Room, Mitch McConnell, now suddenly cares about executive compensation, in this interview with Wolf Blitzer:

Blitzer: There were efforts over the past several months as all of these various bailouts were going through. At least some wanted to impose some caps on salaries for CEO's and top executives of these major corporations, these major financial institutions who were receiving tax payer money. But a lot of that just simply died. Why?

McConnell: Well there's always been a big debate about just how much you can micro-manage the company and keep it profitable but the cold hard reality is, and the message to American business is if you want tax payer dollars, if you're going to have the government as your partner, you're going to have to operate in a different sort of way. I'm among those who would like to see not very many companies with the government as a partner.

But if you're going to have the government as a partner you can't operate in the same way. Obviously AIG is trying to have it both ways and I want to know directly from the Secretary of the Treasury why they got thirty billion dollars a mere two weeks ago, apparently with no strings attached.

Here's McConnell back on Feb. 4th:

On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested he doesn't like the idea of limiting executive compensation.

"What you have to do, it strikes me, is have some kind of parameters that don't have the government basically running the private business," McConnell said, according to ABC News' Jonathan Karl. "It is a tough challenge. I think we are all appalled by these -- some of these executive salary arrangements and bonus arrangements and perks and all the rest. On the other hand, I really don't want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. Then you truly have nationalized the business. So it is a delicate dance to try to prevent blatant abuses and still not have the government as a result of taking an equity position in the government telling them, for example, you can't pay dividends or you can't -- I mean, things that are just ordinary business practices. We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.”

As noted as the Huffington Post back in February, the leaders of the GOP were railing against President Obama's proposal to limit executive compensation at a half a million dollars.