UnitedHealth’s Bill McGuire: I’m not really a money guy; I just played one for 14 years

In today’s big consumer news, former UnitedHealth CEO Bill McGuire has come up with a flimsy new defense for the backdated stock options that turned him into a billionaire and resulted in a lawsuit filed by UnitedHealth’s shareholders. McGuire’s lawyers now claim he didn’t realize the $1.56 billion downward restatement of earnings he received was wrong, because he’s a doctor, not an accountant, the Strib reports.

In other words, he was just a medical doctor playing a major CEO. How’s he supposed to know anything about money and finance? He only spent 14 years as CEO of one of the largest health care insurers in the United States. Don’t even begin talking to him about stocks and all that numbers gobblygook!

Last week, Forbes reported that UnitedHealth spent more than $1.1 million lobbying the federal government on legislation issues in the first quarter of this year alone. The Minnetonka-based company also lobbied against the Bank Holding Company Act of 2007, which would have restricted a commercial company from operating a bank. UnitedHealth is a non-financial company that owns industrial banks.

But don’t expect a UnitedHealth CEO to understand anything about money and stock options. The company owns industrial banks, but it’s just paper printed with pretty faces they move around every day.