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