
Aetna's CEO pays workers up to $500 to sleep - davidf18
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/05/why-aetnas-ceo-pays-workers-up-to-500-to-sleep.html
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MrTonyD
I hate insurance companies. For one, they refused to pay for pre-approved
claims when my wife had cancer and was being treated at Stanford (We were
double-insured. Apparently, when you have two insurances, it is common for
carriers to decline payments in the hope that the other insurance will pay
it.) So my wife couldn't get out of bed and we literally had a stack of unpaid
bills over a foot high and totaling over a half-million dollars.

Another reason to hate them is what I learned from consulting for insurance
companies. I've been told first-hand stories by claims-adjusters about how the
fax machine is intentionally put on the other side of their building and the
CEO's assistant goes by and throws out all the papers. (The have the sense not
to question why that is done.) And they discover that anyone paying too many
legitimate claims gets fired. And their doctor's "reviews" only exist to look
for people who might die and have the family resources to sue, and to decline
legitimate claims so that enough people give up on their insurance claims.
They cry when telling these stories.

Addendum: My wife lived - but the experience was more horrible than I have
words to describe. And I'm fortunate that I could afford to hire a consultant
to work with the insurance company billing. It took 2 years, but we got most
of it paid. I eventually wrote a check for a few thousand dollars to try to
undo the damage to my credit report. To this day, I'm not sure why I had to
pay that money and why it took two years when I had "great" insurance through
two companies.

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sna1l
Medical insurance in the US doesn't make any sense. Insurance is supposed to
be a hedge against a large risk, but in the US we use our medical insurance to
pay for common visits and prescriptions. Everyone is so used to this model
that it doesn't seem weird.

Imagine if you used your car insurance to pay for gas. That would be
ludicrous. No other "insurance" is handled in this manner.

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ma2rten
Car insurance is worse actually. In the US if you have an accident with bodily
injury the settlement can go in the millions, but the legal limit for car
insurance is as low as 20k. They do the opposite of what insurance should do,
hedge against a small risk and leave you unprotected from big risks.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> They do the opposite of what insurance should do

There are a couple of points you seem to be missing:

\- This insurance works precisely as you say it should, but on a lower scale.
In exchange for a fee, it protects you, the holder, from losses too large to
easily absorb. If those losses _aren 't_ too large for you to absorb, you can
post a bond instead of having insurance.

\- You don't have car insurance for your own benefit. You have it for everyone
else's benefit (that's why you're required to have it). It doesn't matter if
you get wiped out by the fines resulting from an accident _because that 's not
why you have insurance_. The point of your insurance is to make sure that the
parties you injure can recover something. The legal limit is therefore set at
an appropriate level for that goal. If you want insurance that protects _you_
at a higher level than that, you can easily purchase some with a higher cap.

~~~
jacalata
The point of insurance is to protect the person you hit by ensuring someone
will pay their costs. If the legal minimum is far below the potential costs,
then the insurance is failing at that purpose, because it doesn't matter how
many millions you settle for, most people can't pay it to you and being owed
by a deadbeat doesn't pay hospital bills.

~~~
xtreme
Should the legal minimum be close to the highest potential cost? You can cause
massive damage if you hit a luxury car, or are involved in a multi-vehicle
accident. Should you be forced to carry insurance that would cover these
scenarios? That would drive up the premium of the legally required insurance,
and likely increase the number of uninsured motorists. Considering most
accidents result in rather small payouts, there must be a cost-benefit
analysis done to determine the legally required minimum.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I think a fair legal minimum is the average price of a new car.

~~~
Spooky23
The property is a trivial cost in comparison to personal injury liability.

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nommm-nommm
Yes, of course! I never claimed otherwise!

However, you need some number so I think that makes some sense as a starting
point. 20k is the minimum here and that's low in my opinion.

Actually now that I think about it there bodily injury is separate from
property injury. Here it's 20k property injury and 30k bodily injury are the
legal minimums.

I just remember being surprised because cars are so expensive it is not hard
to do 20k in property damage, just hit a late model car.

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dmarlow
Seems like a PR move more than anything else. I'm tired of hearing about all
of these weird benefits. How about just an awesome place to work that pays
well?

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danharaj
Weird benefits are a result of employers trying to incentivize their workers
to behave in certain ways.

~~~
Godel_unicode
For example, the weird benefit that many US companies give their employees
reduced healthcare premiums if they certify that they are tobacco-free

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voodootrucker
This seems like a creepy overreach into personal matters that's bound to
continue, and likely end badly.

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Godel_unicode
I'm curious how you see a voluntary program to pay employees to do something
they should be doing anyway is creepy and/or overreach?

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atomical
Voluntary work from home policy (required for work from home): We can visit
and photograph your desk at home any time we want.

I have seen contracts like this and it's becoming more and more popular.

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pmiller2
Where?

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stegosaurus
I wouldn't wear a fitbit for $500 a year.

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chinathrow
Attach it to your neighbours dog. Instant profit!

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roflchoppa
Mark seemed to have the conversation under control with all questions being
fired off.

From the ~500 datapoints i have regarding my sleep from sleepcycle I would
also say that sleep plays a large factor in how I can perform in my school
tasks. Now at around 7 hours of sleep, Ill land to a "~70% sleep quality". At
that point, I am able to perform the task in class, with little feelings of
distractions, drowsiness. etc.

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jevinskie
Do you have to get _all_ 20 days of 7+ hours of sleep in a row with no screw-
ups? If so, seems rather unlikely to happen!

~~~
JustResign
The article is poorly phrased -- I believe the "in a row" applies to (7+ hours
of sleep) instead of (20 days of 7+ hours of sleep).

In other words, just the seven hours of sleep has to be contiguous?

~~~
corin_
"In a row" wouldn't normally be used with units of time like that, it implies
something happening each time (in this case the 7+ hours of sleep, happening
each night)

