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At Louisiana health-care company LHC Group Inc., the board’s compensation committee has approved a 90% raise for the chief executive over

Shareholders like their corporate boards stocked with independent directors—men and women unencumbered by close ties to the company or its executives.

At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay.

Henry Schacht, Lucent Technologies Inc.'s former chief executive and still a director, met with retirees in 10 states last fall to explain why Lucent was cutting their medical and life-insurance benefits.

The loud message comes from one company after another: Surging health-care costs for retired workers are creating a giant burden. So companies have been cutting health benefits for their retirees or requiring them to contribute more of the cost.

After her fiance died suddenly, Patricia Galvin left New York for San Francisco in 1996 and took a job as a tax lawyer for a large law firm. A few years later, she began confiding to a psychologist at Stanford Hospital &Clinics about her relationships with family, friends and co-workers.