State Regulators Bear Down on Bright Health as Exec Bonuses Draw Scrutiny

Struggling health insurer Bright Health Group Inc. raised eyebrows with its recent announcement that CEO George Mikan III and other top executives earned more than $3.7 million in performance bonuses — despite posting a net loss of more than $600 million last year. The troubled startup insurer is under supervision by at least two state regulators, and one persistent critic of the firm’s executives tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the bonuses are “outrageous.” 

Bright’s 2022 Form 10-K, an annual filing all publicly traded companies are required to submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed that Mikan received $1.69 million, with other notable officers of the company receiving between $190,115 and $765,000 in bonuses. Each of the executives who were awarded a bonus received the full amount they could have received based on performance incentives. Bright added in the filing that Mikan’s total compensation was $9,993,169, while the median compensation for a Bright employee was $71,500, meaning Mikan earned 140 times the average Bright employee.