> why, in a world with billions of people, we would spend a million dollars to keep just one human alive?
Because part of what makes us, "us" is keeping one human alive. That one human, one baby is someone's baby. If it was your baby, wife, sister, friend, how quickly you'd tell the insurance company and hospital, nah, don't pay for it, let them die. You wouldn't have to pay. That is why you joined AOL maybe and have "great" insurance. For not having to go bankrupt or make such decisions in cases like this.
I can see how someone in a poor country might be offended, but I am offended when a CEO who makes millions of dollars per year says that. Saving those 2 babies was just 15% of his annual salary. You can turn that question around and then ask: "I know it will sound unfeeling but I have to wonder why, in a world with billions of people, many making under $100/month, many sick and starving, we would, as a society even let one single CEO of some washed up Internet company that used to mail stupid cup coasters in CD form, make tens of millions of dollars / year?".
I think it's more a problem of prioritising finite resources. Pointing to his salary is just an ad hominem attack, and does nothing to progress the discussion. Basically, say you have a thousand employees and $5 million. If you spend $2 million on two of them, then it only leaves $3 million to spend on benefits for the remaining 998 employees. Like it or not, it's a zero sum game. It's a tricky ethical dilemma.
> Pointing to his salary is just an ad hominem attack ... and does nothing to progress the discussion.
Isn't it the other side of the coin? I think it progresses the discussion pretty well. The profit pool a company makes is a finite resource. Let's talk about that then too if we are going to bring in logic fallacies and game theory into the game.
So let's look at it this way -- You have a thousand employees and $5 million. And you spend $4 million as salary to the CEO and then spread around the rest to everyone else and it only leave $1 million for everyone else. It is a tricky dilemma? Or is it?
What is the sum, for this "0 sum" game? Whoever set up that insurance pool might have been pretty incompetent and stupid for not accounting for such events. I am assuming there is no explosive epidemic of expensive-baby-threatening-diseases amongst AOL employee's families. So there is one person to fire on the spot during a "town hall meeting"
And when you have extra profits of hundreds of millions, you can take a few extra of those millions and shore up the insurance coffers so that future outlier scenarios don't give people the option of scapegoating that section of the company first.
Yap, it does
> why, in a world with billions of people, we would spend a million dollars to keep just one human alive?
Because part of what makes us, "us" is keeping one human alive. That one human, one baby is someone's baby. If it was your baby, wife, sister, friend, how quickly you'd tell the insurance company and hospital, nah, don't pay for it, let them die. You wouldn't have to pay. That is why you joined AOL maybe and have "great" insurance. For not having to go bankrupt or make such decisions in cases like this.
I can see how someone in a poor country might be offended, but I am offended when a CEO who makes millions of dollars per year says that. Saving those 2 babies was just 15% of his annual salary. You can turn that question around and then ask: "I know it will sound unfeeling but I have to wonder why, in a world with billions of people, many making under $100/month, many sick and starving, we would, as a society even let one single CEO of some washed up Internet company that used to mail stupid cup coasters in CD form, make tens of millions of dollars / year?".