Isn't it how the insurance works(and the very point of it)?
Spreading the risk(and cost) over multitude of individuals?
I his words utterly silly
In normal first-world countries you have some form of socialized healthcare with bioethics committees that decide what should society should pay for. You can have reasoned arguments about end-of-life care and very premature babies.
But in America with the crazy system of employee-provided coverage it's the CEO that sets coverage limits, and generally speaking a company's interests are not aligned with society in general.
If not for Obamacare, AOL would have provided a insurance plan that wouldn't have covered this child, and instead left her to die and her family in a permanent state of medical bankruptcy.
ETA: For the record, I think most insurance policies have covered this for awhile. But Armstrong's either very confused, or, more likely, just struggling to find a way to point fingers at anything who's not him.
left her to die and her family in a permanent state of medical bankruptcy.
I'm not a fan of the US system either, but I live in a country with State-run healthcare, and cost decisions like those are made every day.
People love saying that about America, but it's not true and never has been.
For cases like that there is government insurance. It's called Medicaid, or Chip, or a bunch of other names, and it's available everywhere.
(And it doesn't help that the person you replied to is doubly confused and combined two unrelated things to confuse him even more. The CEO was saying that Obamacare was an added expense - it had nothing to do with the babies.)
But I agree, if you can't use your insurance when you need it, whats the point of insurance?
You mean the people encouraging people to use proper fire-safety techniques, "baby-proof" their homes, eat more healthful foods, exercise regularly, etc?
Of course every insurance company knows they will have to pay some claims at some point, it's a cost of doing business. So their entire purpose isn't to avoid paying claims, it's to charge enough in premiums to cover those claims while still making a profit.
Regarding what most insurance policies cover, there are actually several scenarios that would leave AOL on the hook. First, they could have a policy that has an Annual or Lifetime payment limit, which would leave the company (or individual) responsible for anything over. Alternatively, if the number of incidents was significantly higher than average for the carrier, AOL could see a significant premium increase due to the higher utilization of their plan. Or, they could actually be running a self-funded insurance program, which means they are managing the risk instead of relying on a separate insurance carrier.
Either way, there are several situations in which AOL's costs could be significantly impacted by the situation.