I don't understand the complaint by the AOL guy

[question everything]

Don't the employees of AOL carry medical insurance? And if yes, did not the insurance pay for the baby? Why would it affect the finance of AOL - if at all?

Also, the father of the baby was reported to work at Huffington Post. What does Arianna says about this, if at all?

[okaawhatever]

1. His company was self-insured or reinsured. Someone will explain it better, but the general

idea is that many of these large companies just use insurers to handle the business end.

[M0rpheus]

4. Close enough...

The plan is likely self-funded. Meaning, that the company pays all the claims for coverage and the insurance company just processes them.

[SharonAnn]

2. AOL is probably self-insured. Even if not, their insurance rate might've been raised but

probably not. They're a big enough company that a couple of extraordinary medical situations probably didn't change their risk profile.

Where this has been a problem, is where it affected small businesses in the past when an employee's serious medical situation can cause business's insurance rates to be greatly increased or even the insurance to be dropped completely.

[JaneyVee]

3. I think I read that the medical bills were over $1Million?

Either way, it's just another example of the heartlessness of the rich.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

5. He tried to pass off his draconian and nearly unprecedented 401k move

on exorbitant health costs. Yes, he was being a duplicitous asshole and was caught.

[riderinthestorm]

6. Yes, his company is "self-insured".

That means AOL pays every claim gambling that they are so big that it all evens out - the vast majority of employees pay in, and yes some small minority are "big ticket items" but they never are so large they overwhelm the small payers.

So when you get one, two, three people who have major medical expenses theoretically they 'swamp" the system and their costs are more than what everyone else has contributed to the fund that year.

In AOL's case, this was probably an anomalous year and they lost money in their health insurance arena. That doesn't mean they didn't MAKE money in all the other years (and in fact they probably did).

Regardless, the "loss" was probably minimal in the overall financial picture. Yet the AOL boss chose to single out the two preemies as the "cause" for why they were slashing 401ks for everyone in the company.

Despicable. Dishonest. And probably a violation of HIPAA since Armstrong is (theoretically) the head of the company and therefore the head of their "insurance" who "outed" a client.

[KoKo]

7. Good Points...but, Armstrong made it sound like he'd forked out 2 Million...

And...I wish the media had gotten into that more. Focusing on the Mother and her Baby sort of got beyond the real issues of did AOL have to come up with 2 Mil...or was that aggregated over all the heath care costs so premiums might rise. He didn't pay it out of his pocket and once wonders "how small a business AOL is." I don't see it at as a small Mom & Pop Business with maybe 10 employees.

But...that's the problem. Wish the MSM had done better job of getting to what the real costs were to AOL in insurance premiums rising costs for those two little babies problem or was he just whining?

[question everything]

8. And, no doubt, he still made, will continue to make, his millions

in compensation.

As for "outing," what do you expect from someone who fired an employee in front of many?

Just a nasty piece of work.

[riderinthestorm]

9. I hope the family sues him for HIPAA violations.

They've certainly toxified the waters for those two employees who are certainly getting some negative reactions from other employees they continue to work with.

Its only a matter of time before the company fabricates some excuse to fire them or the environment is so bad they quit.

As a self-insured company, there are rules about giving out that much information about a person's health condition that they are identifiable. I believe Armstrong stepped over that line.

They should act now to protect themselves because its damn sure Armstrong is only looking out for number uno - himself.