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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

#161

Post by fennecfoxen »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #80
ForHackernews wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

I think your example conclusively demonstrates that people in radically different economic and cultural circumstances have different attitudes towards their children. This is a completely fair conclusion, but has very little bearing when reasoning about health care for infants in modern neonatal ICUs, especially infants with rich technologist parents.

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

#162

Post by HillRat »

dlokshin wrote: post #44
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 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…

The irony is that France didn't even allow most withholding of heroic neonatal care until 2004+ (e.g, la loi Leonetti, etc), whereas the US regularly refused such care until 1984 and then enacted statutory allowances for refusing futile neonatal care in 1986 (Baby Doe revised). Also see the Texas Advance Directives Act of 1999 and withdrawal of futile neonatal care pursuant to it.

In fact, France still does not allow withholding of nutrition and fluids from an infant not on a ventilator, a practice that is permissible in the US when care is deemed futile.

If you want an example of a state that practices more aggressive withholding of care in the NICU, look at the Netherlands, which has a private insurance model more akin to the US. According to the Nuffield report on neonatal medicine, "In the Netherlands, a consensus had been reached by 2003 that ... Dutch perinatal centers should not normally resuscitate and treat extremely premature babies born before 25 weeks of gestation, because of poor outcomes."

According to the report, the difference between the US model and the Netherlands could be seen in that twice as many premature infants born in the US survived to the age of two, but in the US five times as many premature infants had disabling cerebral palsy.

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

#163

Post by lutusp »

a3n wrote: post #155
lutusp wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with a self-insurance plan re-insuring is that it undermines the very reason for the self-insurance -- it erodes the advantage of local investment of the set-asides.

But not totally, and would presumably protect against catastrophic catastrophes by spreading the meta-risk. You could make the same argument against having home or medical insurance, that it erodes the advantage of having the totality of your take home pay. But it seems responsible to have home insurance and medical insurance, and it would seem responsible for a self-insurer to reinsure.

The problem with re-insuring is it's not one thing and its not the other. The advantage of self-insurance is diminished, and the advantage of conventional insurance is diminished also.

> it would seem responsible for a self-insurer to reinsure.

Reinsuring is sort of like being married, and not being married, at once. Many people think that sounds pretty cool -- until they try it.

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

#164

Post by brown9-2 »

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…

Isn't self insuring generally considered more efficient for companies of this size?

I can't find the link right now but I read somewhere that it is common for large companies that self-insure to buy reinsurance to cover themselves against large payouts like in Armstrong's mythical example. The company will typically have an insurance policy for their insurance policy.

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

#165

Post by brown9-2 »

The other very odd aspect of this story is blaming 7 million in new costs on Obamacare.

A large company like aol would have already provided pretty good health benefits. It is very unlikely that the ACA's provisions about mandatory coverage for procedures (such as birth control) would have cost aol anything significant.

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

#166

Post by balloot »

dlokshin wrote: post #44
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 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…

Even your own data completely undermines your point. All those other countries have very comparable preterm infant mortality rates when measured against the US. You say the girl "likely" would have died in France, but in Norway and Sweden (two of the most socialist countries in the world) the girl would have had a better chance of surviving at 25 weeks. By your own data that is supposedly proving the ineffectiveness of single payer healthcare.

Go back to Fox News where people don't actually care about facts if you want to make sensational arguments with zero evidence.

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

#167

Post by davidw »

pg wrote: post #157
scotty79 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's not about what you say but about what people infer about what you think from what they've heard.

Depends what you mean by "about." Do you mean 1. People often attack you for some belief they mistakenly attribute to you. or 2. What you actually say or believe doesn't matter. If people want to make up some belief to attribute to you in order to attack it, that's fine. If you mean 1, I agree. But I would hope that here, at least, we wouldn't sink to that sort of mob behavior.

He announced the company would be giving less money to employees, and blamed it on some babies, when he's earning, by himself, much more than the two incidents cost, and supposedly presided over a successful quarter.

Seems, if nothing else, a poor way of handling things. Even if you're a "tight-fisted homo-economomicus shareholder" the end result is bad, because in the end his gaffe and the subsequent publicity meant that he reversed the cuts, so the company won't get to keep that money.

I'm not against high pay for executives or that kind of thing, so I'm fine with him making oodles of money if he's doing a good job. Part of doing a good job in that position, though, is not sticking one's foot in one's mouth.

Also: I think there are certainly times when people just try and twist words to score political points, whatever the actual facts. This case doesn't strike me as one of those, really.

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

#168

Post by balloot »

dlokshin wrote: post #74
pjc50 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. and in the universal-healthcare UK, my brother survived being 12 weeks premature. Do you have a cite for the French system, specifically that withdrawal of care in NICU? English or French will be fine.

In the UK they give services, and reasses on an ongoing basis, so different than the French. Added some info for under 37 weeks, where the US comes out on top.

So are you admitting that your original point about single payer healthcare is totally BS? Because the UK has single payer and apparently you think they do a decent job with this situation.

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

#169

Post by luckydude »

yscale wrote: post #135
thaumasiotes wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your reference: I don't have children of my own. When I was 16, my mother gave birth to twins, so I have more parenting experience than the typical childless American, including that of holding closely-related infants. > It's easier to make the calls before you have a kid, they are calls in theory. After you have a kid you are changed Very true, but I don't see myself reversing on this.

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.

I was once a childless single white male programmer. Oh, and an asshole. Didn't realize it at the time but I wised up. Give him time and cut him a little slack, he's entitled to his opinion.

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

#170

Post by michaelochurch »

Tim Armstrong shows us directly what the upper class actually thinks of us.

The mean-spirited worldview shouldn't be a surprise. What is a bit brazen is the "turn the poors on each other" behavior. Usually, it's not so obvious. He had hoped that the rank-and-file employees would, as a response to this phony scarcity (health benefits OR 401k, when the real problem is executive overcompensation) imposed from above, turn their frustrations and gripes at colleagues who get sick a lot (or have sick children, or sick parents) and that the environmental change would, perhaps, prune the company of a few sick people. It didn't work. Now everyone hates him. Good. I hope he dies alone, broke, and miserable. (The "broke" part probably won't happen, but one can dream.)

Whenever the upper class tries to turn the rest of us against each other (say, Mission lifers vs. Google bus riders, who are on the same side even if they don't know it) we should always recognize it for what it is, and attack the real enemy with our combined force.

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