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That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

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Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#81

Post by ceph_ »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #60
ekidd wrote: post #31

I'm delighted to hear that this child is doing well, and I'm utterly appalled at Tim Armstrong's attitudes towards the lives of his employee's children. Apparently it's possible to pay a programmer $100K/year, but spending ten times that to save the life of one of his employee's children is absolutely unacceptable. I'll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I hear from an AOL recruiter. The whole point of insura…

The craziest thing to me is what an utterly small drop in the bucket this is and how Tim embarrassed the entire company and their stockholders over an expense that is <1% of AOLs revenue and is less than his yearly salary. He should have been immediately fired for both insensitivity and short-sightedness to the point of incompetence.

Man who makes 12 million a year decries outlandish million dollar spending to save child's life. The guy is absolute scum.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#82

Post by a3n »

lutusp wrote: post #57
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are outliers like this not "what insurance is for"? I'm curious (not arguing). I could understand that 'self insuring' is a different beast, but isn't the point of insurance in general (not just healthcare), to protect against outliers? If the company didn't put aside enough money to account for unexpected cases, such as this, arn't they just being negligent (or at the very least causing their own financi…

> the point of insurance in general (not just healthcare), to protect against outliers? No, the point of insurance is to enrich the stockholders of the insurance company. This might sound like a leftist rant, but it's actually the singe most important thing to understand about the insurance business. If a policy term doesn't contribute to the bottom line, it's changed to disfavor the policy holder. If a deductible am…

But it's sold to payers of premiums as protection against outliers. And if it's sold as such, but isn't really, then it's fraud. Let a hundred lawsuits bloom.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#83

Post by cperciva »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #42
paul wrote: post #30

My daughter had a similar birth and hospital stay, which also produced a million dollar insurance bill. It costs about $10,000/day to stay in the NICU. I was never able work out why it costs so much, except that this is a major profit center for hospitals, and they use the money to cover other, money losing, departments. Fortunately Google is run by good people, and they were never anything other than supportive. I'm…

> I do think our medical system needs some rethinking though. You probaby don't want to hear it, but if I were running a medical system I'd decree that gestating one-and-a-half-pound globs (from the article: "One doctor, visibly shaken, described [the fetus's skin] as 'gelatinous'") outside the womb is a waste of resources. To me, if miscarriages aren't the end of the world, neither are "babies" that die of natural c…

There's just no way spending a million dollars to raise a fetus up to the age of zero passes any kind of cost-benefit analysis

If you look at the cost in dollars per QALY, it's not that bad. That million dollar treatment probably produces 40 QALYs, for a cost of $25,000 per QALY; Americans typically pay $50-100k per QALY.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#84

Post by ItendToDisagree »

lutusp wrote: post #57
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly are outliers like this not "what insurance is for"? I'm curious (not arguing). I could understand that 'self insuring' is a different beast, but isn't the point of insurance in general (not just healthcare), to protect against outliers? If the company didn't put aside enough money to account for unexpected cases, such as this, arn't they just being negligent (or at the very least causing their own financi…

> the point of insurance in general (not just healthcare), to protect against outliers? No, the point of insurance is to enrich the stockholders of the insurance company. This might sound like a leftist rant, but it's actually the singe most important thing to understand about the insurance business. If a policy term doesn't contribute to the bottom line, it's changed to disfavor the policy holder. If a deductible am…

Agreed, the point of 'any' company is to enrich the stockholders.

I was more saying the point of insurance in general to those buying the insurance is to protect against outliers.

Not debating the point that insurance companies are there to make a profit rather than to service people. Agree with what you're saying but it doesn't address what I was asking.

Edit: Also since AOL 'self insured' there wasn't an insurance company at the heart. AOL just decided to cut corners and 'put away money for a rainy day', and was shortsighted on how much to put away, to put it simply

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#85

Post by a3n »

lutusp wrote: post #68
jbapple wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (note: if you don't really understand healthcare, e.g. what self insuring means, please don't respond with comments that the insurance company pays the bills, this is what insurance is for, etc.). Could you explain more about how self insuring works?

> Could you explain more about how self insuring works? In normal insurance, the policy payments go into an investment pool that benefits the corporation's stockholders. In self-insurance, the set-aside funds go into an investment pool that benefits you (or your company). The drawback to self-insurance are outlier claims that can more than wipe out the set-aside (as in the case under discussion). Obviously an insuran…

Insurance companies re-insure. Can't a self-insured company do the same? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#86

Post by BSousa »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #66
nilsbunger wrote: post #29

AOL could've chosen a 3rd party insurance company instead of self-insuring. Self-insuring was probably a decision intended to save money compared to getting an external health provider. The CEO could conclude that these outlier events create too much unpredictability for the bottom line, and thus move the company to an external healthcare provider. Heck, they could even fire the CFO or whoever made the cost-benefit a…

Thats the real shocking part here. AOL made a poor business decision, paid for it, and the CEO, the very person in charge of business decisions, blames medical complications from a fucking baby. It is absolutely unfathomably terrible from a quality human being perspective.

Just in case the author is reading, change the fucking word placement please.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#87

Post by thaumasiotes »

bluthru wrote: post #56
thaumasiotes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think our medical system needs some rethinking though. You probaby don't want to hear it, but if I were running a medical system I'd decree that gestating one-and-a-half-pound globs (from the article: "One doctor, visibly shaken, described [the fetus's skin] as 'gelatinous'") outside the womb is a waste of resources. To me, if miscarriages aren't the end of the world, neither are "babies" that die of natural c…

I don't necessarily agree, but I don't think your opinion should be downvoted. Consider this: We as a society have more than enough wealth to give ICU care to every infant that needs it. Our medical system is what makes it expensive.

A minor point:

> We as a society have more than enough wealth to give ICU care to every infant that needs it.

I'm not particularly informed here, but this is a claim I'm willing to accept.

> Our medical system is what makes it expensive.

This isn't right. Giving intensive care to extremely premature infants is inherently expensive, in much the same way that mining is expensive because you have to move tons and tons of dirt. It's difficult, and it requires a very large quantity of dedicated resources; it will not be cheap at any point in the foreseeable future no matter what organizational changes we make. We'd need technological changes.

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#88

Post by mgkimsal »

ForHackernews wrote: post #64
thaumasiotes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are a little more willing to spend someone else's money on less-than-worthwhile pursuits than they are to spend their own. As long as the customers aren't bearing the cost, everything they buy will have a similarly inelastic demand. Healthcare for distressed infants is certainly not an example of inelastic demand where people have to pay for it themselves; even food for healthy infants (a much smaller, and muc…

> Healthcare for distressed infants is certainly not an example of inelastic demand where people have to pay for it themselves Are you kidding me? If it was a question of saving my child's life, I'd spend every last cent I had and then go sell a kidney.

At some point you'd run out of organs to sell, and the child still might die, sad as that may be. :/

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#89

Post by gaius »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #35
gaius wrote: post #22

This guy is a walking disaster. How is it anyone is willing to work for him?

He pays money?

It wasn't the only reason, sure, but it has been a contributing factor to me resigning that I couldn't bear to make the management any richer...

Re: That “distressed baby" Tim Armstrong blamed for benefit cuts? She’s my daughter

#90

Post by maxerickson »

masklinn wrote: post #69
dlokshin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that if we were to have a single payer or other form of universal healthcare like they do in France, this little girl likely would have died. In France they use "Statistical prognostic" approach which in these sorts of cases withhold NICU services for infants with statistically low outcomes. Edit: couldn't find data for premies at 25 weeks, but at 37 weeks and below, survival rate in the US is higher tha…

> in these sorts of cases withhold NICU services for infants with statistically low outcomes Do you have any source for these claims?

It's not super recent, but this paper discusses attitudes in the U.S.:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/120/3/519.full...

It sounds like 23 weeks and 500 grams are (were in 2007?) important benchmarks.

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