Fighting The FCC - Radio Ink radioink.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from radioink.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
to the average restaurant. obamacare is going to kill off the small businesses. we no longer have free enterprise capitalism in health care. now tim armstrong is saying aol s employee benefits need to be cut because of obamacare. obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company, so we have to decide whether or not to pass that expense to employees or whether to cut other benefits. the l.a. times reports health insurance experts aren t sure where armstrong is getting that $7.1 million figure. experts we spoke to were equally baffled. but in armstrong s defense, he didn t just blame obamacare for the changes. on a companywide call, he also blamed the parents of two sick infants. we had two aolers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid $1 million each to make sure those babies were okay in general. so when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased health care costs, i made the decision to basically change
of course, oil prices went down and we never got rid of the baggage fees, right? this permanent structural change to the cost structure that benefited them, and you re completely about this kind of panic that runs through chain e-mails and just water pool conversation about so-and-so s boss, cutting back part time, hours. they now have obamacare to hang it on. right. it should be said, that s a whole different set of fish there. that s for only smaller employers. it s been delayed so it s not happening. it s true, there s been this generalized move to make any benefit change the result of obamacare. you know, but i want to two go the other part armstrong mentioned. when he was pressed on it more, he said in 2012, by the way, not 2013, 2012, they had 2 employees who had children who were presumably had really severe health care problems. each cost $1 million or more. that is really where you get into the cost structure of
blame exactly. on obamacare. that s a very, very big deal. the 401(k) change that armstrong made has two effects basically. one is the main thing it does, it saves the company money because it only gives payout for the 40 401(k). the matching at the end of the year. the company wasn t paying the money it would have paid if the 401(k) made money during the year. the other thing, if anybody wants to leave the company during the middle of the year, they have to contend with the fact they re going to get a big payout for the 401(k) at the end. it gives them a disincentive to leave in the world, makes it harder to recruit. it s a reasonably good change, because it saves him money and makes people harder it recruit and extraordinarily convenient for a guy who makes $12 million at a company that made profits of $36 million last quarter to blame that on mystery costs out of obamacare. that is a great point. it reminds me a little bit of the structure of the airline baggage fees which
as a ceo and as a management team, we had to decide, do we pass the $7.1 million of obamacare costs to our employees or do we try to eat as much of that as possible and cut other benefits? meet tim armstrong. he s the ceo of aol. since taking over in 2009, aol has spent hundreds of millions on properties like the huffington post and patch while laying off thousands of employees. but armstrong is doing okay. in 2012, he took home $12.1 million. so he s pretty good at making money. but what kind of boss is he? well, he once fired an employee on a conference call. if you think what s going on right now is a joke, and you want to joke around about it, you should pick your stuff up and leave patch today. patch from an experience put that camera down. abel, you re fired. out. abel lenz was fired for