Deadspin: Dolphins Fire a Scout Who Worked From Home to Care for his Wife

It's really not unusual for scouts to live elsewhere. I've heard of it plenty. People are missing that the reason Sullivan and wife live in Orlando is so that his wife's family could help take care of her, and for her medical care. It's not like he is a home shut in with her. He flew out to watch games and do what live scouting he needed to. His job was to watch tape and write scouting reports.

He'd been a 17 year member of the Dolphins family and he's got a terminal wife and the Dolphins let him go presumably because an arrangement which is ok for most GMs was not ok for this one. Or at least, that's the story. It's not right if that's really what happened.

Although honestly it wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't Hickey's call.

 

Scot Mcloughlan

 

If there are other scouts on the team doing this, then Sullivan has a legitimate gripe.

 

thats what happens when you have a "for profit health care system". The rest of the world sits back and laughs at us, we're destroying our own economy for greed by the wealthiest.

 

CEO'S of pharmacuiticals that bring large profits, also share holders - it's criminal for anyone to profit from someone else's misery, at least that's the way the rest of the world sees it.

 

This organization continues to challenge their own fans' loyalty.

Bunch of monkeys ****ing a bowling ball.

 

Do we know if a settlement was not discussed with the folks?

 

you hang around here bud, we'll keep you strong.

 

Pretty much what i think is happening. Miamis image is in shambles right now and he and his lawyer see an opportunity to use that against them. This "letter" even mentions Jon Martin and Don Jones tweet. Why would it mention these things? They are in no way connected to his firing.

though i bet he scouted them both...

 

He was a pro scout, not a college scout.

 

He's trying to show that the Dolphins present poor workplace standards/ ethics. And he's not wrong... Three incidents in a year.

Also he was a pro scout, not college, (http://www.miamidolphins.com/team/staff-directory.html) but good effort in trying to put the guy down.

 

Ok. Then he probably scouted Incognito as a pro. Much better. Or Legedu Naanee. Or Philip wheeler. Or Dannel Ellerbe. Or Tyson Clabo. Hm...pro scout makes him sound a lot worse actually...Our free agents are particularly often worse then they are good

And those "incidents" ( i guess we're calling a dude tweeting his opinion an incident now) have nothing to do with his situation. Whatever he was let go for has no relevancy to a player tweeting his opinion or the offensive line being a bunch of idiots together and one guy couldn't take it.

 

I love our nhs and I'll happily vote for any party who defends it from vultures and sharks. Thank god nhs Scotland is separate from England. They're selling it off down their. See also drug companies. Pfizer should be told to sling it, nationalise astra zeneca and keep the jobs and innovation in the UK. I've debated in the pofo healthcare before, I don't understand the resistance to free at the point of care universal healthcare that it appears the U.S. has. As for the dolphins, quelle surprise!

 

the cost of the pill didn't change, it was the company's insurance that is no longer covering it. and the story is full of crap, it doesn't cost 3000/day, more like 600/day. The Dolphins must have revamped their health insurance plan. The drug is Kalydeco (made by my company). It has orphan drug status, which means - since it's the only treatment in the entire world that actually works on this disease - that they can charge an exorbidant amount to recoup the research costs. What I don't understand is that most companies (insurance) are more than willing to cover the costs of this drug because it's a helluva lot cheaper in the long run to pay the 200+K /year for the treatment than it is to pay daily care for a CF patient who isn't taking the drug. There's more to this story, i.e., Hickey just doesn't want this scout on his team. If he was a really good scout, the company would find a way to pay the insurance premium.

 

I'm not defending Pfizer, they have actually done their part to ruin the entire industry and have partially been responsible for raising healthcare costs. For their recent attempt to buy AstraZeneca, Pfizer execs should be taken out back and shot. the only reason they were doing it was for a tax break and they would have fired most people @ AZ.
As far as the crazy costs for new medicines, there's a general ignorance in society that believes that companies make medicines cheaply and then sell them for crazy profits. This isn't like Coca-Cola, make it for pennies, sell it for gigantic profits. Just keep in mind that it took more than 10 years of research and well over a billion dollars to bring that CF drug to market. When we eventually do get to the point that medicines are forced to be sold for very cheap, companies will stop making medicines. Research is very expensive. the only workaround is if the gov't subsidizes research, which will never happen either.

 

How can you even prove that unless the Dolphins said that for some reason? It's the right of the employer to select their group coverage and COST just so happens to be a legitimate reason to change that benefit. So unless it's in a contract that a particular care be maintained as a benefit of employment, I would think the employee is subject to the same change in benefits after open enrollment as everyone else. I just don't see how a guy who comes to work half the time for 10 years has a gripe to his employer about their healthcare coverage and his ability to continue coming to work half the time unless it's written in an employment contract that he is able to do so. I would think he is "At Will" like everyone else and if they wanted him gone, they'd just fire him outright. He's not a Federal/State worker where they necessarily have to come up with a good reason to fire him.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just tripping.

 

First let me say I feel bad for the guy. It must be terrible to have a love one suffer from a potentially terminal disease for so long.

But some of you seem pretty gullible to me. This seems like nothing more than an attempt by his attorney to play at heartstrings and create a negative PR campaign in order to get the Dolphins to make a settlement. According to CK its not unusual for a scout to work remotely. So if he was doing his job well do you really think Hickey would fire him over it? More likely his performance was not up to standard and Hickey mentioned the remote work environment as a potential reason why.

I also highly doubt that the GM has any input whatsoever in the selecting of insurance policies. So the fact that the medicine she required was no longer covered is probably just an unfortunate coincidence. Mentioning Martin and Jones seems like a real reach and was probably done simply to drag the NFL into it as well and to sling more mud at the Dolphins.

And for all you ACA fans, ACA requires certain things to be covered so to keep premiums as close to their former levels, many insurance companies are electing to drop coverage on other items. So yes the change in coverage can very well be a byproduct of ACA.

 

I get long term huge financial commitment it takes to produce new drugs. I question after that the massive profits these firms make. I also understand that it isn't a charity. I'm looking forward to the revolution when we take back our world from the profiteers and vultures.

 

you and me both.

 

Wait until that new "Fat Pill" gets approved. Sheesh. It's going to be Bedlam!

 

that's oversimplifying the situation. For some companies, the "massive profits" are invested back into the company so they can try and come up with the next new treatment of "X" disease. The problem is that the number of pharmaceutical companies that actually still do real research to try and find cures for diseases is rapidly dwindling. Take Pfizer, they do almost zero research internally. They MO is to go out, buy other companies, fire employees and transfer the profits to their shareholders. So, companies like Pfizer deserve every bit of the venom spewed at them. The biggest fear for those of us doing real life-changing research is that we'll be the next company bought and dissolved by Pfizer. Pfizer and Glaxo have chewed up and spit out the majority of large companies in the world. There's not much left.

 

It's just frustrating. Not a week ago the Seahawks were making news because their 6th round pick turned out to have a rare heart condition which will effectively end his football career before it began, but the Seahawks signed him to his contract anyway even knowing about his prior condition, JUST so that he could collect upwards of $600k from them when they waived him. Why? Because the moment they drafted him, he was a member of the Seahawks family and they go out of their way to take care of their own.

Yet here are the Dolphins firing a guy that had been a member of the family for 17 years, and presumably it's because he has special needs associated with his dying wife. People are getting caught up in the legal element of this (of course the Dolphins had a right to fire him!) but they're not taking up for the human element of this (were the Dolphins right to fire him?).

Obviously we're not hearing all sides of the story. Maybe the guy did this to himself. At work I just heard about a guy that was a disaster as a sales employee here and they had to figure out what to do with him because he's friends with the CEO's daughter but he tried to do a bunch of stupid stuff like expense a $600 per night hotel room, or expense the sunglasses he lost during a road trip, or a speeding ticket he got during a road trip, etc. If this Sullivan guy has been like that then even if you feel bad about his sick wife then you can understand the decision to let him go.

But that's not what we're hearing on the outset. The story being presented is he was fired because the arrangement didn't work, and I don't agree with that if it's true.

 

agreed that the human element should take priority in these situations. but we are lacking serious context here. It's pretty easy to paint the management as evil bastards without that context. In these situations, that context is not going to become public knowledge. I'm not going to assume the worst without knowing the context. I don't get the impression that ole softie Ross has that in him and I don't see Hickey firing this guy given his situation without Ross's knowledge. It's not like the scout counts against the salary cap. But maybe there's more political mess to this. Maybe someone else in the organization (just for example Aponte) has a major beef with the scout or maybe it's the whole staff - and they used the change at GM as a chance to clean house.

 

The startling aspect of it is I think that Nick Saban and Jeff Ireland seemed to have completely grasped the human aspect.

 

That is scary. I can only think that Nick Saban was completely buffered from the situation by Rick Spielman and Randy Mueller. As for Jeff Ireland this is one where I'll give him credit, it's my understanding he has two special needs kids he's raising and that may have made him likely to give the guy a break.

The other point I raised is maybe this wasn't really Hickey's call. Maybe someone a bit higher up made this call. How much of an additional expense would Sullivan's wife pose on the team?

 

Well Jeff Ireland could probably sympathize, seeing as he has daughters with autism.

I've hear reports that Nick Saban stepped over Sullivan's wife in the hallway when we went to visit their home in Orlando.

 

I'm waiting to see someone else dig into this story, or a Dolphins response. It seems like a lose/lose situation either way.

 

This sounds like a guy who is fighting for his job because he can't sfford the care of his wife alone. His lawyers smell blood in the water from all the negative media the team has produced and he's trying to use that to keep his client's income and more importantly, insurance, coming in.

 

The lawyer is wrong IMO, and one of the big reasons I'm not buying the legal case is because it seems like this lawyer is a hack, or is just trying to bully the organization.

The Miami Dolphins do not present poor workplace standards. Its quite the opposite. Whenever the organization has been made aware of harassment or anything that violates their policy, the organization has taken action. Incognito was suspended/exiled. Coaches were fired. Pouncey is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, and Don Jones was suspended and sought counseling. The Dolphins' actions have exhibited a commitment to eliminating any type of harassment/discrimination.

And this is a great example of why people have no room to complain about the actions taken against players who have violated this policy. Had the Dolphins not taken these actions, then Sullivan's lawyer could easily point to the lack of action and therefore argue that the Dolphins were complicit with harassing and discriminatory behavior.

 

Or they didn't feel that Sullivan's arrangement had a detrimental effect on the scouting department? IMO this is more about Dennis Hickey's management style and competency than it is any type of callousness or discrimination.

 

yeah, I don't see how you can claim that Miami presents a poor workplace standards when they have worked around the situation for a decade already. I don't like how little that means in this case.

 

Again his intent to litigate letter is asking for reinstatement. That's his goal. The stuff about Martin and Don Jones if I'm reading this correctly was specific to the letter's naming the NFL itself as a possible defendant. People talk about what actions the Dolphins have taken internally to deal with the various situations that have popped up but I don't think that has legal bearing because the reason those incidents have been brought up is because the letter is claiming that the NFL itself should have disciplined the Dolphins by now for these sorts of workplace issues constantly popping up, but the NFL has not...and so they're also liable.

It's sort of like if Domino's has a certain franchise that keeps developing health code violations and/or customers getting sick, even if those problems keep being addressed adequately by the franchise owner every time they pop up (employees disciplined, etc), at what point do you make Domino's Pizza (ticker: DPZ) itself liable for the fact that problems keep persistently popping up at that particular store to which they've sold their franchise?

That's kind of the argument the lawyer is making and it's just an excuse to bring another heavyweight into the fight and perhaps play the Dolphins off the NFL a bit. Since the goal is just to get the guy reinstated then perhaps the NFL will decide it doesn't want this headache on their hands and they'll just lean on the Dolphins to reinstate the guy. Or perhaps they'll arrange for him to have a job with a different NFL team.

 

I think it's pretty human to give a guy 17 years on the teet. I mean....that's a career worth of concessions. Do the Dolphins essentially have to wait for the wife to die to be human? Is he unfireable because of his wife's condition? Should the Dolphins essentially pay out of pocket for all employees who have issues that are uncovered by the company selected plan? I don't know how many employees the Miami Dolphins have, but it would seem like a lot for the Dolphins to make up any deltas in what Aetna or whomever they have chosen no longer cover. 17 years seems pretty human to me, especially if the "concessions" were not contractual.

 

Oh I'm sure they'd have no problem paying the guy if they felt he was worth keeping. Certainly isn't about them cutting costs.

I just can't believe the crazy markups that are allowed in the prescription market. I wish things like that were regulated and capped. Meaning you can only make X amount on prescriptions. Being able to charge crazy amounts bc sick people have to have these pills is such bull****.

 

But Ohio Fanatic already explained this. The markups are necessary to cover the billions spent on the 10+years the drug was in research. Then the company has something like a 7 year window that they can make back their money and hopefully some profits before the drug can be made generic. They're also trying to cover the billions spent on the research of the drugs that fail and never hit the market.

Capping the markup means that Pharma companies won't make money, meaning they'll stop researching, meaning no new drugs to fight diseases will be made.

 

This is true to a certain degree. The problem is that the government often spends a lot to research and develop, then the pharmaceutical company will get the drug essentially for free. This is what makes it so difficult to assess the economics behind it.

 

That makes sense if it's a private company paying for all of their own research.

Doesn't the government issue money for a lot of this research though? I just find it hard to believe we don't have budgets set aside for things like that.

 

This is what I'm saying.

 

This may be true for some drugs. But I've worked in R&D for a few different pharma companies. They spend billions on research and most of the stuff fails and doesn't hit the market. And the companies I worked for did the Research and Development themselves.