Mom: AOL CEO implied we were greedy
A mother says that her child was one that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong labeled as a "distressed baby."

AOL employees did not like the company’s recent change to their 401(k) plans. Matching 401(k) contributions will be made at the end of the year rather

than the end of each pay period.
Even less popular was how AOL CEO Tim Armstrong explained this change. He talked about rising healthcare costs, incited two AOL families who used benefits

to cover high-risk pregnancies. He referred to babies as distressed babies.
Well, you could imagine outrage ensued, then, Armstrong apologized and AOL reversed the policy change. One of the mothers whose children Armstrong

referred to as a distressed baby spoke to NBC about the comment.
It was sort of impossible to process that he was talking about my daughter who was home with me at that time, you know, to hear her labelled a distressed

baby. And to me, there did sound like an implication that somehow we were greedy consumers of healthcare benefits, that we had kind of gobbled up more

than our share of the pie.
That mother, that’s Deanna Fei, wrote a really moving and compelling article for Slate.com, saying, “…he (Armstrong) exposed the most searing

experience of our lives…for no other purpose than an absurd justification for corporate cost-cutting.”
So here is my thing about this. Tim Armstrong is the guy that most people haven’t heard of. He’s the CEO of a company that a lot of people would be

surprised to know still exist, America Online. He’s been in the news twice in the last year, for this talking about distressed babies and also for firing

a guy who was snapping photos in the company meeting right there. This is bad press.
This is an interesting disconnect that we’ve seen before between corporate CEOs and real people, this woman was the face of a situation that was very

painful to her. They almost lost their baby. She’s a little miracle to begin with.
This is why you get health insurance.
Yeah.