[lxt]

Wow. A billion dollars in profit, 12 million in his pocket each year...but the 7 million for health care has to come out of the employees' other pocket.

Also, the fact that he's blaming two babies - I find it highly unlikely, statistically, that two such cases blew the cost of premiums for a group as large as AOL. I'm pretty sure they had more employees with cancer that year, for example, and that's also super-expensive.

This guy is despicable.

[jbattle]

A) How did AOL end up paying "a million dollars each" if they have insurance? B) Everyone close to those parents would know who they were. A baby in the hospital is something that people hear about. So now those parents get to feel singled out, guilty, blamed, etc. for "screwing things up" for the rest of the company.

What an ass

[andzt]

Agree with you on the ass part. But to give you some information:

A) AOL most likely self-insures... Why? Exactly because of catastrophic events like this increasing your premiums for all of your thousands of employees, even though most of them are probably healthy and low risk. Insurance companies don't care! It's usually better to self-insure until you run into these catastrophic insurance events. B) Agreed. It's disgraceful for any executive of any company to publicly share any type of individual insurance information. Also, borderline illegal.

[TonyCoffman]

Like many companies - they are likely self-insured. If that is true, then they pay the actual costs of the claims right out of their pockets rather than participating in a larger risk pool.

I agree - it's completely disgusting to bring these costs up in that context.

[gcb0]

Unless they are in the group that collected 401k monthly and left to another employer ;)

[eterm]

Even if the two babies did have a significant impact, it's utterly disgusting to parade them as an excuse for cutting benefits.

[lmg643]

it's small-ball management, certainly not appropriate for a firm of their size and stature.

we've seen some crazy unprofessional behavior from armstrong before - the spot firing conference call is also classic amateur hour. not a good sign for AOL.

[joyeuse6701]

The company isn't a church or a charity or an example of excellent morality. It is for profit. There are places to work that offer no benefits mind you. Somewhere along the lines people ought to realize that their negative reactions from this stem from two things: Going from more to less bothers people. Someone who has more than others taking more those with nothing also, bothers people. If employees (those two babies by proxy) are costing the company more (big assumption if that is the case), it makes a lot of sense to adjust employee related costs to compensate for such events, as opposed to re-appropriating the money from somewhere else despite what your sense of morality dictates.

I find it equally hilarious that everyone blames the 'singling out' as the criminal act here. Singling out only works if the mob (other AOL employees) actually target those two women, and how fucked up would that be? Are you really going to ignore the employees moral responsibilities to not target women with children in need but call out only the CEO?

French revolution mentality.

[gopher1]

Guys, there are worse places to work with no benefits, therefore anything that AOL does is morally A-OK so long as they're higher than the ridiculously low bar of current employment standards.

And hey, this is a for profit company, therefore they have no moral obligation to do anything other than make a profit. In fact they should refuse all healthcare obligations, remove pensions and outsource all their employees to gain more profits. There's absolutely no societal obligation toward a populace on a corporation's behalf. The company just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and didn't benefit from society to get where they are today at all.

/s

[joyeuse6701]

Eh, that's a murky sarcastic point you're making. It's about a contract/compensation in the end. Benefits that were in place, are now removed but the work expected from individuals is the same, that upsets people and the contractual balance, whereas if they gave raises to everyone for the same amount of work, all workers are happy! It's morally (to me) arbitrary. 'good change' is morally acceptable 'bad change' is not. How sad.

[VikingCoder]

Please tell me where you work, so I can make sure to never work there.

One of the best ways for-profit, high-tech companies maintain profitability is to ensure that they have happy workers.

This is dumb, all-around: it doesn't save much cost, and it creates animosity.

[joyeuse6701]

Eh, high-tech yeah, since the products they create depend on it. So I agree, but I don't consider AOL high-tech anymore. On the other hand, Apple by extension employs FOXCONN it's laborers, and I don't know how much their happiness effects profitability.

[gum_ina_package]

He's not blaming two babies, he simply stated that unforeseen events caused the company's healthcare costs to go up unexpectedly.

[727374]

Sounds to me like he's blaming the babies or else he could have left them out of it and said something like 'exceptional events'.

[bilbo0s]

That's EXACTLY what he should have done.

He should have said, "The cost of our medical benefits package was higher than expected." FULL STOP.

I can't, for the life of me, see how anyone could possibly think what that man did was appropriate.

[abarringer]

On a group the size of AOL statistics would clearly imply at least two expensive cases per year. To single those cases out is inexcusable.

In 2000 I worked at a relatively small company of 50 employees. One person had a baby that cost millions sic. Being a small group we all knew who it was and anticipated our insurance rates increasing.

Our rates went up some but not much, and the company president decided to cover 100% of the increase. I greatly admired the company for doing that and now 14 years later I find myself working with the same team on a new startup. The company president has been able to get back most of the top talent from a decade ago because we all respect and admire his leadership.

[nsxwolf]

He didn't have to say what those events were. Now everyone in the office knows who is "responsible" for these cuts - two poor parents with sick babies. There was no reason for the CEO to create this kind of resentment for those parents.

[rgrieselhuber]

Still disgusting to parade two specific examples like that.