If I didn't pay their salaries, I wouldn't care how much they make.

The New York Times points an accusing finger at hospital executives for daring to accept seven-figure salaries in tough economic times, when payments to doctors and hospitals are being cut left and right by cash-strapped states.

Yaron Brook and Don Watkins (and others) have already made the case for why CEOs earn their pay. People with the big-picture vision to lead a company to large gains in value are rare indeed, and they are worth millions of dollars a year. I don't begrudge them that, as many leftists do...

...except when I'm paying their salaries without benefiting from the goods and services their companies produce.

Do I care how much Steve Jobs makes? Hell, no -- he can get paid gobs of cash and stock every year, and I will nod and smile and say thank you to him for leading the company that has produced all kinds of gadgets without which my husband and I would be lost. If I thought his salary made Apple products more expensive than they're worth to me, I could quit buying those products and look for something cheaper that meets my needs. But I don't care that I earn far, far less money in a year than he does. I don't have the vision to run a large company. I don't even desire the responsibility of running a small one! So why would I resent what he earns -- yes, earns?

But let's talk about those hospital executives. As with Steve Jobs, I wouldn't have to care about what they make if it weren't for the fact that I pay tens of thousands of dollars in state, federal, and local taxes every year, and because Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs are such a huge chunk of that tax burden. So I am helping to pay for these guys' salaries!

Do I benefit from the work of hospital executives? Sort of -- on the rare occasions (exactly twice thus far in my lifetime) that I, a healthy young person, have needed hospital care, I have gotten it, and hospital executives, by knowing where to allocate resources and plan for the future, in part made that possible. But, for the most part, I don't need their services at this point in my life, and in a free market, I wouldn't have to pay their salaries. In fact, hospital executives are probably doing me a disservice because part of their job is to see how they can squeeze more money out of the government -- if an executive successfully lobbies for higher payments from the government, for example, or broader coverage of hospital procedures, he might be awarded a higher salary because he's managed to capture a bigger share of government loot. So no, I don't want to contribute to the high salary of someone who gets that high salary in part because he's good at stealing even more of my money!

That being said, I still don't want the government stepping in and dictating hospital executive pay. As Brook and Watkins put it when Washington was making noise about dictating Wall Street executive pay, this is just an overture to give the government a say in all CEOs' pay, which it should not have. What I want is for the government to get out of medicine -- so that Americans wouldn't have any reason to be upset over how much hospital executives make.