How much you can make working at top biotech companies

Hello,

Welcome to Insider Healthcare. I'm Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, and this week in healthcare news:

• We analyzed compensation at 189 biotech companies, finding the highest-paid CEOs and the highest median pay;
• Providing care at home is a booming industry – and major health systems are working through how to provide more hospital-level care at home;
• Rivalries are bubbling up as giants like Amazon and Walmart bet more on healthcare.

If you're new to this newsletter, sign up here. Tips, comments? Email me at [email protected] or tweet @lydiaramsey125. Let's get to it…

Well, it's official: Fully vaccinated people won't have to wear masks pretty much anywhere except in healthcare settings, the CDC said on Thursday.

As I approach two weeks after my second dose, I'm looking forward to feeling a lot more comfortable re-entering society – masked or unmasked.

Digging into biotech compensation

Our biotech reporters Andrew Dunn and Allison DeAngelis have embarked on a big compensation analysis.

Their analysis of 189 drug companies revealed the highest-paid CEOs.

It also revealed the median pay at 23 top biotech companies. Employees can make up to $701,000!

We break down median employee pay here>>

There were some highly compensated CEOs in 2020, including two who made more than $100 million last year.

Here's the full list>>

We analyzed compensation at 189 top drug companies to reveal the highest-paid CEOs, including 2 who make more than $100 million

Healthcare at home

Bolstered by the pandemic, the healthcare industry is finding a renewed interest in the big business of caring for people at home.

That can span anything from checking in with aging Americans living on their own and assisting with daily tasks, to finding ways to provide hospital-grade care in a person's living room.

This week, two major health systems - Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente - invested $100 million in a hospital-at-home company, Shelby Livingston reports.

The push to do more serious care - X-rays, labs, and infusions, for example - at home came as hospitals needed to free up room for COVID-19 patients. And that investment - among others - is a signal health systems are eager to keep it up.

It's not just hospitals driving this push into the home.

Shelby this week also detailed how health-insurance giant Humana is shaping the future of healthcare by pumping billions into medical-clinic companies - and home health.

Patricia Kelly Yeo, meanwhile, took a look at the booming home-care industry, where there's lots of turnover, and wages are around $12 an hour.

Find out more>>

Inside the booming home-care industry, where wages are low, turnover high, and Wall Street investors are trickling in

Taking on healthcare from the outside

As we so often report, retail and tech companies are looking to healthcare as their next frontier.

No place is that more apparent than with Amazon, which last week signed on its first Amazon Care client, Insider first reported.

Morgan Stanley analysts, Kelly reports, have a vision for how Amazon could reshape the way companies provide healthcare, with the help of Amazon Care and Amazon's pharmacy services.

Elsewhere, Blake Dodge got the scoop that a key Apple healthcare executive is leaving.

Myoung Cha, who served as Apple's head of strategic bets in healthcare, is leaving for health clinic company Carbon Health.

Read the full scoop here>>

The healthcare ambitions of rivals Amazon and Walmart share a lot of similarities, Blake also reported this week.

They both got their public starts about two years ago.

And both are betting on providing medical care, both with a physical and virtual footprint, most recently seen in Walmart's deal to buy telehealth company MeMD.

Get the full analysis>>

Amazon and Walmart are facing off on a new battleground: healthcare

More stories we covered this week:

• Now people 12 and up can get Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine, Andrew reports.
• Andrew also reports that AbbVie is facing the biggest challenge yet to its best-selling medicine, Humira, as an unlikely Icelandic drugmaker launches a legal fight over 'outrageous' patents.
• Blake reports that Amwell is struggling to win over Wall Street as the telehealth giant gears up for healthcare's new world.
• Cedar, a healthcare startup that helps hospitals and doctors get paid, is buying its rival Ooda Health in a $425 million deal, Shelby reports.
• And Allison had the scoop on Perceptive Advisors' $515 million fund. The fund's manager told us the 3 things he looks for in a startup's pitch, and shared one the fund's invested in.

- Lydia