The Montana Health Co-op advertises on its website that “we spend as little as possible on overhead so we can keep our premiums low,” but the six-figure salary of the non-profit’s CEO has many wondering if the co-op is really living up to its claims.

"Our total administrative costs, which include all of our employees, our offices and the very limited amount of advertising that we do, is less than eight percent of the money we take in," said Montana Health Co-op Director of Marketing Karen Early. "So, for every dollar that we take in, eight cents is spent on administrated overhead, including the salaries of everyone at the co-op."

Montana Health Co-op CEO Jerry Dworak reportedly made 306,000 dollars in 2013, but Early says his pay has gone down since then.

"Jerry Dworak's salary is $275,000," Early said. "His salary has actually gone down as we revised our budgets and have done everything we can to keep our premiums as low as possible. Our compensation committee does a comparison of companies our size and the compensation of our CEO to other similar size insurance companies and we are very much on the lower end of what we pay our CEO."

The pay of health co-op CEO’s across the country has come under scrutiny in numerous articles over the past year because billions of tax payer dollars were spent under the Affordable Care Act to help get the health co-ops up and running.

Mr. Dworak's salary might be comparable to others in the health insurance field, but it will still be hard for many Montanans to understand. Dworak's pay is double that of the average Montana CEO, private sector included. According to Montana Department of Labor and Industry Senior Economist Barbara Wagner, the average CEO in the state earns $115, 000. The average wage in Montana is $38,875 (2014) and even high profile positions barely earn six figures.

For comparison's sake, even with the pay decrease, Mr. Dworak's salary is more than the combined total of Governor Steve Bullock ($108,167) and Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath ($126,269), two of the highest paid public officials in the state. In Montana at least, it appears working for a  "non-profit" pays more than public service.

 

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