Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 280 posts

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

#261

Post by lutusp »

jbapple wrote: post #256
lutusp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "strictly worse", because if one cares about maximizing profits for the company and wages for the employees, the self-insurance route might be better overall. Formal insurance arrangements can be a real drain on resources. On the other hand, some companies choose to self-insure without fully appreciating the risks.

How serious are the risks to the company's other assets? Can a company limit the damage to its other assets if the money it set aside for insurance gets used up?

> Can a company limit the damage to its other assets if the money it set aside for insurance gets used up?

Yes, but at risk of civil lawsuits from the insured, who might have a different perception of their coverage. This kind of thing actually happens, often based on an implied contract between the employer and the staff that may have never been fully committed to paper.

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

#262

Post by zohebv »

pg wrote: post #241
dylandrop wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think saying "I'm utterly appalled" on an online chat board is a lot different from joining a mob to kill someone. Let's not make any Tom Perkins-esque comparisons here [1]. And people should certainly be allowed to react when those in positions of power say appalling things. Whether he thinks that is absolutely unacceptable is doubtful, but he clearly thinks that the $7.1M in healthcare spending is something that…

Using the term "lynch mob" metaphorically is a long established usage. But in case you weren't just pretending to misunderstand me, I didn't mean that HN users are literally planning to kill Tim Armstrong. I meant the forces that drive lynch mobs are driving people here.

It should be fairly clear from the responses to your post that the characterization of this reaction as a "lynch mob" does not meet the established standard of usage of this term.

Getting universally criticized for a statement is not a qualification for assuming "lynch mob" victim status.

> I meant the forces that drive lynch mobs are driving people here.

This particular statement can be interpreted in so many different ways that it remains meaningless as it stands.

> Did he say that?

Did anyone lynch him?

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

#263

Post by facepalm »

lutusp wrote: post #188
facepalm wrote: post #178

I don't understand - doesn't insurance pay for such costs? Why is it an extra burden for a company if one of their employees needs money from the health insurance?

Because AOL chose to self-insure, there's no insurance company, just an asset pool within AOL itself.

I see - didn't know that kind of thing exists.

Seems to me they very simply not good enough at crunching the numbers then.

Also, I think even insurances tend to have insurances against very high insurance claims. Maybe they should look into that kind of thing.

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

#264

Post by thaumasiotes »

alexjeffrey wrote: post #131
thaumasiotes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on how much I need $100K (odds are I can pull this together if I'm attached to the child), and, crucially, on the age of the child. I place essentially no value on a child at negative eighteen weeks old. I mean, would you personally pay a million dollars to save my child? I'm no more attached to a new nonviable fetus than you are to my (imaginary) 11-year-old.

If I ran a business that turned over $1.05B, and you and I had some form of relationship be that employment or friendship, of course I would. If I had any reasonable number of resources I would prioritise saving lives over building a collection of sports cars or properties. Especially so if I ran a hospital. Of course this perspective is easy to take from the UK where we don't have to face tough financial decisions o…

> If I ran a business that turned over $1.05B, and you and I had some form of relationship be that employment or friendship, of course I would.

Sure. But you don't; we've never met.

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

#265

Post by shasta »

DanBC wrote: post #260
shasta wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that's very interesting. Whether it's a fish brain or frog larva brain or something more, though, my point is that it's not yet intrinsically worth protecting as human life. Its worth is all potential. Consider: how much would would this life be worth if brain development stopped at this point? For a newborn or earlier, the answer is not much.

I am strongly "pro choice" - i would allow abortion on demand upto 21 weeks and after that with medical need. I think the way we deal with children who have very poor quality of life and very little chance of living beyond a few months after being born is really poor. None of this is incompatible with saying that the "clump of cells" is precious and worth preserving, and that parents should have support before, durin…

That's reasonable. Again, my original comment was comparing the "clump of cells" to an older child.

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

#266

Post by thaumasiotes »

paul wrote: post #114
thaumasiotes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

How many tons of dirt do you need to move to give intensive care to an infant? I spent quite a bit of time in the NICU and was never able to locate the $10,000/day expense. Medical expenses have more to do with billing codes and reimbursement rates than anything fundamental.

This information comes from consulting my mother (who is an obstetrician):

The most "direct" cost of NICU care is 24-hour supervision by a nurse. In the best (cheapest) case, this will cost the same as 12 hours of minimum wage per day, as nurses might be in a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio with patients. More realistically, the nurse will be making higher than minimum wage.

The NICU fee also covers the amortized cost of three major pieces of capital: the ventilator, which causes the baby to breathe, the incubator, which keeps it at an appropriate temperature, and the negative pressure room. A particular infant may or may not need the negative pressure room, but it exists as a (physically separate) part of the NICU, the hospital must have one, and it's hugely expensive to create.

Additionally, the baby is expected to suffer various bodily failures which will require treatment. Diagnosis and treatment of these will be charged separately; they are not covered in the NICU fee. But they do reflect that these babies would really rather die, and it's difficult and expensive to get them to live.

My mother says (paraphrased), "if you are the army, you buy all the machines yourself, you pay everyone army salaries, and you just assign them 'you'll do this job, you'll do this job', etc., I don't know what it would cost to run an NICU. There's definitely room for it to be cheaper."

"Is there room for it to be cheap?"

"No."

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

#267

Post by yscale »

gojomo wrote: post #235
yscale wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's entitled to his (ignorant) opinions, but he's not entitled to be so pointlessly rude and cruel with his method of expressing it. If this was a dinner party, I'd quietly ask him to excuse himself, and he'd never be invited again. His choice of language was pointlessly cruel and outrageous.

If all conversations were limited to dinner-party politeness, we'd remain trapped in a state of childlike obliviousness about the real disagreements and difficulties of the world. (My dinner party would welcome both paul and thaumasiotes, as people able to speak about a difficult topic calmly, with strong and contrasting perspectives based on real experience. In contrast, yscale would be asked to apologize or leave f…

Saying "cost of replacing the thing" about a baby, to a father, was not calm speech about a difficult topic.

It was pointlessly rude and provocative. It was an indefensible way to express his underlying opinion.

And if you were paying attention, you would've realized I emphasized his method of expressing the opinion far more than the opinion itself.

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

#268

Post by yscale »

Crake wrote: post #240
yscale wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are an ignorant, arrogant idiot, and a callous asshole. BTW, we already knew you didn't have kids. We knew that both from your beliefs, and moreso from the the hurtful language you chose to use. We all already knew you were childless. And single. And white. And male. And a programmer. And an asshole. Now do the world a favor, and shut up. Forever.

> And single. And white. And male. And a programmer. Ok, asshole childless person is at least mildly related to the topic at hand, but the rest of these just seem like irrelevant ad hominems. >Now do the world a favor, and shut up. Forever. Why do I get the feeling your tumblr is full of equally venomous "go kill yourself"s?

I'd also be willing to bet that he programs in languages like Ocaml and Haskell.

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

#269

Post by thaumasiotes »

judk wrote: post #113
thaumasiotes wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave you an example. Mothers uncertain of their ability to raise an infant will abandon it to die (this is traditionally called "exposure"). It's a practice at least as old as humanity. And it conclusively demonstrates that the demand for infant care is not inelastic; these mothers aren't killing themselves trying to preserve their nonviable children. Rather, they're killing the children so that they don't die them…

"So that they don't die themselves " != "because they are unable to raise an infant"

If you take this view:

> 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.

there is no distinction between being unable to raise a child, and being unable to survive the attempt. If you survive, the child will get raised. The only way to fail is by dying (or killing the child).

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

#270

Post by rlanday »

waps wrote: post #228
shasta wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really think my argument was that anything that is a lump of cells that has never had a coherent thought has no value? I can understand a sense of loss in losing an infant at birth. You make plans for the child and are excited to meet the person they will become. It's a miscarriage. A similar loss is learning that your spouse can't get pregnant in the first place. It's not the same as losing a child of 3, 6,…

Just correction a misconception here. The human brain "boots" on the 18th day after conception (you can set your watch to it). It is obvious on echo pictures that coherent thoughts are present on the 21st day after conception (e.g. if awake, most kids are aware that they're being pictured and attempt to find and play with the source of the sound, I think that qualifies as coherent thought). It is quite obvious on the…

This is not true:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_15

Post reply on HN