Receiving almost $3 million in annual salary and benefits in each of the last two years, Lifespan CEO George Vecchione is the highest-paid health-care executive in New England. Vecchione collects almost $1 million more each year than his closet competitor, the CEO at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, although Lifespan is much smaller than Partners and the region's second-largest network, Caritas Christi Health Care, also in Boston. . .

"Most employees, and probably most Rhode Islanders, would be appalled to know executives of our nonprofit hospitals are being paid these kinds of salaries," says Rick Brooks, director of United Nurses and Allied Professionals, "particularly when health-care costs are going up [at] twice the rate of inflation and causing the number of uninsured Rhode Islanders to go up dramatically."

. . . Yet according to Karen Malcolm, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Ocean State Action, "It becomes very hard to make their case when they are paying their top executives so much money."

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