Washington, D.C. — To combat profiteering in the health care sector, the Affordable Care Act imposes strict limits on the corporate tax deductibility of health insurer executive pay. This virtually unknown Obamacare provision saved American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in its first year, according to an Institute for Policy Studies report released today.

The report, Executive Excess 2014: The Obamacare Prescription for Bloated CEO Pay, is the first to analyze the new deductibility rules. It provides a detailed breakdown of taxpayer savings in 2013, based on available data for the 10 largest publicly held health insurance companies.

“Obamacare offers a remedy for a healthier executive pay system,” notes Sarah Anderson, IPS Global Economy Project Director and a veteran executive compensation analyst. “Now all corporations should get the same medicine.”

If the Obamacare executive pay reform were extended to all U.S. corporations, it would generate an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis of Democratic House and Senate bills. The Republican Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee also supports an across-the-board deductibility cap.

This year’s IPS Executive Excess report, the 21st annual, also includes an updated scorecard that rates recent pay CEO pay reforms now in place, as well as other reforms pending in Congress and a few promising initiatives not yet on the congressional table.

More Information: Sarah Anderson, Institute for Policy Studies
(202) 787 5227, sarah@ips-dc.org

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS-DC.org) has conducted path-breaking research on executive compensation for 21 years. The 2013 edition of their annual Executive Excess report received significant media coverage, including in Reuters, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. IPS also provides a constant stream of inequality analysis and solutions through our online weekly Too Much and our website Inequality.org.