X-Message-Number: 5222 Date: Sun, 19 Nov 95 12:24:32 From: Steve Bridge <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Insurance companies DO pay To Cryonet and sci.cryonics >From Steve Bridge, Alcor Life Extension Foundation November 18, 1995 In response to: Message #5201 From: Randy <> Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Subject: So do insurance cos really pay up when cryopatients die? Date: 17 Nov 1995 01:44:26 GMT Message-ID: <48gpdq$> >What I want to know is, what percentage of people who arrange for >cryopreservation and pay by insurance policy actually have the insurance >co pay up when they die? > > Knowing insurance companies, I have some serious doubts about >settlement. As president of Alcor, I deal with insurance companies regularly. While a small number of insurance companies are totally confused by cryonics and may refuse to *write* insurance in the first place, the insurance companies that do write the policies are very reliable about paying on them. Companies that appear to have no problem with cryonics insurance include major names such as New York Life, Jefferson National, and Jackson National, and many smaller companies as well. There would be no economic incentive for these companies to refuse to pay; they would immediately lose all future business from cryonicists. These large companies already have dozens of cryonics policies in effect and they view us as great customers (we take out large policies, pay on them reliably, keep them paid up and in force for decades, and we do things to make ourselves live longer -- the perfect insurance customers!). As cryonics grows and thousands or hundreds of thousands of cryonics policies are sold, these companies want a share of that market. There are also legal requirements for the insurance company to pay us. Based on insurance law, if the company approves the original beneficiary and there was no fraud in the application, then the company MUST pay the beneficiary upon the death of the insured person. There is no getting out of that. The insurance industry operates under strict regulations and upon careful contracts. There is nothing "voluntary" about an insurance company paying a beneficiary. You may be confusing the more or less "black and white" rules of life insurance (is he "dead?" Then pay.) with the often arcane and arbitrary decisions made by automobile and health insurance companies. In addition, many insured cryonicists start out their policies with a different beneficiary (spouse or estate, for example) and eventually switch the beneficiary designation to Alcor or another cryonics organization. Secondary beneficiaries do not require insurance company approval at all, so again this obligates the insurance company to pay. If there is fraud discovered within two years after the policy has been started or if the insured commits suicide within two years, the insurance company may legitimately refuse to pay the beneficiary. However, after two years even these restrictions disappear. At Alcor we have had two instances where insurers refused to pay, both on legitimate grounds. One was a suicide where the policy had been in force only one year (fortunately he also had back-up funding of a different type). The other was in the case of an AIDS patient who had informed the insurance company that he did not have AIDS or cancer at the time he applied for the insurance. He lied about that (we didn't know he had), which the insurance company discovered upon looking at the medical records. Again, his policy had been in effect for only about one year. In both cases, if the policies had been in effect more than two years, the companies would have paid. For humanitarian reasons, the AIDS patient was kept in suspension by Alcor. He was a neuropatient, so the expense hit on Alcor was less than a whole body; and we had spent the upfront money for suspension costs already, so there was little to be gained by removing him from suspension. This patient, however, can look forward to mopping the floors, etc. for a few years after he's revived. Steve Bridge Alcor Life Extension Foundation Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5222