In a July 19, 2007 article for Forbes.com, Peter Katt wrote, "Increasingly, though, this market is evolving into transactions where the main purpose is to charge exorbitant fees and commissions. Life insurers are also going after the wealthy elderly, convincing them to rent their high net worths and their lives to become insured for the sole purpose of then selling the life insurance policies." Katt also warned of the privacy of the insured being violated for higher commissions: "I have had three experiences of individual investors being sent complete information about the insured, insurance company and policy they have invested in or bought. In each situation, the settlement company that sold this investment denies it ever give out the names of insureds. They have lied to me. If sellers of life insurance policies knew their policy could end up in Tony Soprano's IRA, they would be more cautious about whom they sell to."
Certainly if Tony was losing money on a John Smith, who obstinately refused to die for the sake of Tony's profolio, the temptation to....
And that brings this writer to the darkest concern of what I will conclude to be the coming Death Bubble: the eventual collusion of the Health Insurance Industry and the viatical settlement companies to share data and cooperate to limit medical care to those whose lives have been securitized for profit, and resist all the more vigorously any governmental actions to reduce health care costs or provide a public health care option that would make it unnecessary for the terminally ill to sell their life insurance at the risk of collapsing the life insurance securities market.
And, by now, the world knows what happens when the bubble schemes of Wall Street collapse.
The explosion of the ballooning Death Bubble could truly destroy the world.
Some current state laws limiting viaticals can be found at these links:
Kansas: http://www.ksinsurance.org/gpa/news/2008/STOLI_signing_042108.pdf
Montana: http://www.sao.mt.gov/news/20090127Viatical.html
California: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/oct/27/business/fi-42781
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