Carly Fiorina Talks About Her Battle With Cancer

It's really becoming predictable isn't it?

A good story would be finding someone with health issues whose job was destroyed because of Fiorina's disastrous tenure at HP and letting them tell about how they manage their health care.

And another in the endless series of plukasiak's mindlessly vile rhetoric that makes us all embarrassed to be progressives.
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Stay classy, pluk

plukasiak -- you and I may not agree on much, but I certainly can't argue with your current position.

"Are insurers currently required to cover these by government regulation?"
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I wondered about that too. Googling brought up multiple references to 46 of 50 states mandating insurance companies to cover mammograms.
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http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20090821/OPINION03/90820019/1005/NEWS01/Christie--mandate-free--insurance-a-problem-
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But I couldn't find primary source material.

KT:
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Thanks for responding to commentary.
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I do understand the point of this post, so I will share it via link with Lovely Bride.
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Perhaps LB can even be persuaded to show up and comment, but I'm not promising anything...

and she talked quite a bit about the need to focus resources on prevention.
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is she willing to raise taxes in order to create a health care system that focusses more on prevention? THAT is the only real question --- and if she's not, she's just another wealthy fraud that you promote while ignoring the fact that we pay twice as much as any other industrialized nation for health care, and there are still tens of millions of people without access to preventive care.

KT -- I don't have a problem with you focusing on the issue, the problem is that you pretend not to know that's not all you are doing. As a journalist you are not holding Fiorina or any other Republican accountable for their ideology, behaviors, votes, or rhetoric. Frankly, I am not intersted in her vague pontifications about vigilance or prevention. Now that she's had to wage war with cancer, I want to know if she still thinks that it is feasible to expect women, who don't have her personal resources at their disposal, to be able to wage a similar battle under the reform prescriptions she advocated during the McCain. She claimed simply letting folks buy across state lines, which really amounts to inflicting the junk insurance products coming out of states like Texas on the rest of us with state government with the good sense to protect it citizens from unscrupulous business practices unlike most of the states in GOP territory.
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I am so tired of the media wiping the slate clean for these people. It's one thing for Republicans to live in an alternative universe and quite another for the media to join them. She took positions and she should have to answer for them not get a mulligan! So far we've got neocons back to having their foreign policy prescriptions seen as credible as if their epic failures of the last 8 years didn't happen. Now we are going to let this woman speak to an issue her position less than year ago amounted to give them more band-aids. What kind of crap is be vigilant or focus on prevention? You say even with a mammogram something could happen -- did you ask her what should woman who don't even have the mammogram do? How are you going to focus on prevention if the problem of access to any kind of health care is the issue?
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Frankly, I don't care about the humanity of anyone who supports a party who feels that the livelihood of insurance industry executives is more important than the lives of everyone else.

KT --
Its not about your use of this platform to raise awareness about breast cancer. Its about the abuse of this platform to promote conservatives like Fiorina and Snowe.
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Like I said earlier, why not tell the stories of women who aren't filthy rich, and who don't have the choices and resources of Carly Fiorina? Fiorina can afford the absolute best in care and assistance -- she's not the single mom who is the sole care-giver of her kids dealing with the side effects of her treatment while making dinner and doing laundry. THOSE are the stories that are crucial to hear -- but they are the stories that the Beltway prefers to ignore, because those women NEED HELP.

At one point, I really thought that I was the Bad Cop of commenters on this blog.
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I was trying to show people that the point of commentary at a traditional journalists' blog wasn't to pointlessly bicker with other commenters while the reporters stayed blissfully unaware and above the chihuahua fights, but to do the reporting together as a volunteer fact-checking brigade taking the place of legendary institutional fact-checkers at magazines like The New Yorker.
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It's interesting to see how things have changed.

You have been good on the uninsured.

here's the kind of story you should be covering, rather than palling around with multimillionaires at "conferences"...
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http://susiemadrak.com/2009/09/25/12/14/r-i-p-kimi-young-22/
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Sorry, class-warfare thugs like Carly Fiorina instill a visceral reaction in many of us. I would rather hear health care advice from Montgomery Burns.

Carly Fiorina hasn't done anything to deserve this calumny. After all, it's not like she let some woman drown or suffocate in a car without even bothering to go for help.
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you mean besides throwing 40,000 people out of work (thereby denying them health insurance) in order to line her own pockets?
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She fired 25,700 workers in 2001, and saw her pay jump 231 percent, from $1.2 million in 2001 to $4.1 million in 2002. In effect, for each of the people Carly Fiorina fired, she got a bump in salary of $112.84.

. http://www.oliverwillis.com/2008/05/16/mccain-economic-lead-carly-fiorina-cut-jobs-got-a-pay-raise-during-tenure-at-hp/
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(h/t to http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=8110)

So corporations are supposed to retain workers that they don't need. If we did that, economic growth (which benefits all of us) would suffer. Moreover, prices would be higher and we couldn't compete as effectively in global marketplace.

if cutbacks in the number of workers are required, then the pay of the executives who keep their jobs should be reduced, and certainly not raised.

"Spob",

There are many other ways of increasing competitiveness rather than letting go of workers-- even though lay offs are an easy option, its long term benefits are seriously lacking.
I like Fiorina however, I do not support mass layoffs and the existing HR trends which seem to favor layoffs as a better option to other forms of restructuring.
LM
http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

...spob, how do you grow an economy by firing workers?

She fired a bunch of people designing the future of HP and basically made HP into a company that makes money selling little else but ink cartridges.
Her layoffs were not only hateful, but they damaged the long-term viability of the company in order to make her short-term targets looks good. Needless to say hitting short-term targets got her a nice payoff.

"There are many other ways of increasing competitiveness rather than letting go of workers-- even though lay offs are an easy option, its long term benefits are seriously lacking."
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Says who? Yeah, there are ways to cut costs without laying off workers, but given the reality that compensation to employees is often a huge part of a given company's expenses, right-sizing (i.e., layoffs) is usually a big piece of any restructuring.
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"spob, how do you grow an economy by firing workers"
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Do you have a poster in your home that says "War is not healthy for children and other living things." I only ask because your question betrays a naivete that I can only marvel at. The economy grows when enterprises can efficiently produce whatever output they are producing. That maximizes sales and produces benefits for the consumer. Rules that keep inefficient cost structures in place ultimately hurt all of us because prices are kept artificially high and productivity is harmed (which means less output per labor hour).
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"if cutbacks in the number of workers are required, then the pay of the executives who keep their jobs should be reduced, and certainly not raised."
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So someone who makes tough decisions which reduces the costs of operations cannot be compensated? Once again, not a way to run an economy.

She made some bad business decisions and ultimately paid for it. Her career is not a study in lack of ability so to tarnish the successes of this woman in this manner by making such a broad and sweeping generalization is absurd.

This is a dated comment from CNN on the matter

“Fiorina, the only female CEO at a company in the Dow Jones industrial average, had been with HP since 1999. But the company's controversial deal to buy Compaq in the spring of 2002 -- after a bruising proxy fight led by one of the Hewlett family heirs -- has not produced the shareholder returns or profits she had promised.
"While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said in a statement released by the company.”
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Also, I was no McCain supporter and I am glad she admitted his weaknesses. However, when it comes to lies-- most politicians discuss matters especially during elections in a way that would appear most favorable to them, she was no exception to political posturing and embellishment.

LM

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

'She made some bad business decisions and ultimately paid for it.'
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Fiorina was handsomely rewarded when she was fired at HP. She walked away from her failure a rich woman.
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I have friends that work at HP now, and I know others that were dismissed in the layoffs she engineered. They all despise her. The turmoil and misery she wrought upon that company was awful.
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Fiorina's only qualifications for anything are her stint at HP and her connection with the McCain campaign. Both were failures and, in the case of the McCain campaign, notable for her willingness to say anything, no matter how dishonest, to promote her agenda.
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We have seen the results of electing politicians that are long on ambition but short on ability. Fiorina's history shows that she belongs in that group. For those who think 'government IS the problem', her failures will be forgiven, because people of that ideology generally don't expect successful governing anyway. For the rest of us, however, we should look for someone who is capable of successfully managing the government, not just successful at campaigning and self promotion.

I guess someone ripped out the page in my bible that says "Blessed be the millionaire corporate executives who triple their salaries by destroying the lives of working people...."

...that was probably the page that also contained the "judge not, lest ye be judged" phrase too, but I digress.

All of us get judged, especially at work, by the Carly Fiorina's of the world, so I think it is perfectly legitimate and in fact necessary to judge her body of work. She judged 40,000 people and decided they were worth less than her million dollar bonuses.
No one brought up the Jesus proselytizing when she was telling those long-term employees to go kick rocks.
And she is running for public office. The whole point of elections is to "judge" people.
She can either define herself as sweet and strong cancer-fighting lady or she can be defined as a selfish cancer fighting a class war against regular folk. I know which one I think she is and am going to issue my opinion every time she tries to issue hers.

KT:

What I really find unreasonable are people who jump on one post as if this were the sum total of everything I am covering.

You're right, that is unreasonable and counter-productive.

the problem Karen, is that "the public" doesn't remember stories from three months ago -- and more crucially, your other reporting frames the issue in ways that negate the message of those earlier stories.
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Your reporting on health care has consistently skewed to the right, because you present mainstream viewpoints (like public option support) as "far left", and represent right wingers like Baucus, Conrad, and Snow as "moderates". ANYONE WHO IS NOT A SUPPORTER OF A STRONG PUBLIC OPTION IS WELL TO THE RIGHT OF MAINSTREAM AMERICA --- yet you consistently portray these people as "centrists" who are making a "good faith effort" to "achieve compromise".
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When was the last time you went to a social event where there were people without health insurance? When was the last time you went to a social event where there were millionaires? You are surrounded by people with power and money, and that is reflected in your reporting, in which wealth and power is a "norm", and the "little people" who don't have insurance (or worry about losing it) are anomolies (they'd be "exotic" if they were more attractive...).
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And its that perspective that results in posts that praise leeches like Carly Fiorina, and dead tree articles that present parasites like Olympia Snowe as heroes -- and that literally shuts out progressive perspectives on health care that represent the opinions of the vast majority of Americans.
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…pluk, thanks for the 3.6 link, but if Karen wants to go to a social event and meet someone WITH insurance – and could NOT use it – she can have pizza or mac ‘n cheese with her brother. KT, I once had that *exact* same policy type / company before and am glad I never had to use it (have a private if pricey policy now). I hope your brother will be cured soon and not face long-term care. (I didn't know chemo drugs could be used here, if I remember right?) But if so, may he get what he needs. We all may need it someday.

As she has a responsibility to respond, so also do you.
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Thanks so much for doing your part to keep this engagement productive, dollared.

Plus, every woman should check her breasts. Often.

Inappropriate humor I can't resist here:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/12_year_old_boy_scouts_volunteer

Yeah, LM, that some companies overdo layoffs doesn't mean that layoffs aren't often the right thing to do for the stakeholders in the business. And you know, a lot of times the short-term liquidity problem simply needs to be solved . . . .
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Ignorance and a lack of logic, not a good combo, LM.

Spobf,

Short term liquidity is not solved by layoffs. Any capable Accounting or Human Resources will tell you this simple fact.

Check out SHRM and other resources on short term liquidity and the banking system. I think they had a good Webinar on the SHRM website on Compensation and Layoffs which effectively addressed and thoroughly debunked the points you have raised on the subject.

LM

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

Oh good God. Do you actually work in a field where people restructure companies?
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First of all, when a company is in trouble, its lenders often control its access to cash (a very serious short term liquidity problem). Lenders tend to want to see reductions in expenses (particularly if little or no top-line growth is projected).
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Second of all, you do kinda stumble on an issue--often times RIFs have significant upfront costs. Thus in the real short-term liquidity problems can be exacerbated (of course, the lenders will often support such actions), but expense cutting often has very dramatic effects on financial performance in the semi-near term.
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Third of all, your one-size fits all "don't layoff" advice simply is silly. Different companies have different challenges. And while firing and rehiring is expensive and companies should be cautious that layoffs don't kill topline growth, downsizing is very often the right thing for a company to do (at least from the perspective of its viability).

First your response is remarkably simplistic, even a tad foolish in its lack of clarity and dearth in rational extrapolation from factual data.

While lenders could control short term liquidity, most seasoned bankers are interested in long term solutions and not some "entry" that looks good on paper in the short term.
Reduction in expense does not immediately translate to reduction in force.
While of course some organizations opt for this less efficient option, it does not mean that such an option is fective.

Reduction in force has been shown to cause measurable loss to a company's ability to compete in the domestic and global markets.

Expenses can be cut, officers can be fuloughed , FWA's instituted (Flexible work arrangements) Reduction of Healthcare costs through well managed Wellness programs, Compensation Reduced Etc. Etc. The list of preferred options as opposed to human capital reduction is extensive and supported by existing data on the issue.

Most competent executives are aware that people, its employees, are its greatest investment and their abilities, skills and contributions are critical to sustaining or regaining growth.

My response is correct and far superior to your rambling comment about “short term” projections and liquidity. Lenders want their monies back and also want to make a profit on it, the average reasonable banker will assist in restructuring based on valid and tested parameters-- and most well informed officers, based on existing data-- would opt to reduce the workforce as a last resort.

Also, there is no “Lay off fits all” remark made by me. When discussions like this occur, the general rule or best practice is stated—which is what I have done. Exceptions to the general rule could exist.

Let me restate againnnn: There are many bodies which have (over a sustained period through vigorous research, review and experiments) acquired specialization in the areas of Corporate Restructuring, Human Capital Reduction, Skills Management, Profit Margins and Competitiveness etc.
One such organization as I stated earlier is SHRM (The Society for Human Resources Management). There is extensive material available on the subject matter on their sites for you to educate yourself on the subject matter of Reduction in Force and Lay offs.

LM
http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

LM, your pie in the sky rhetoric fails for two reasons:

1) Reality. Bankers tend to want to see expenses cut, and drastically when things really get sideways.

2) Logic. That some companies overdo it on RIFs does not mean that RIFs aren't the right answer in many many situations where the company is in extremis or its workforce is simply too big.

Yapping about some study that shows that some companies made mistakes etc. does not alter reality.

Do you have a right to a job? Didn't see it in my constitution?