X-Message-Number: 1212
From: 
Subject: Re: cryonics:
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 92 20:30:33 PDT

"Steven B. Harris" <> (re the financial 
drain of [some] last-minute sign-ups) writes: 

>   Here's my suggestion:  Charge yearly membership fees (dues) on
>a sliding scale according to how long a person has been signed
>up.  Fees would thus initially be high (more on this later), and
>drop over time.  

Two of the terminal cases this year were members under a week 
before we went on standby (we did ok on one, and lost our shirt 
on the other).  A high membership fee over the first few years 
might make these folks wait till the very last minute to sign up. 

What I would prefer (rather than raising the cost for people who 
have a rough time paying for their suspension at all) would be 
policies which *reduce the cost* to Alcor for such patients. 
  
Perhaps we need a hard and fast rule which says that you either 
make do with local people where you are, move near Alcor, or 
establish a line of credit we can draw on to fund an extended 
standby.  I don't really want to cut down on the number of 
suspensions we do--we *can* and do (because of donated labor) 
make a little money off even last minute cases--and we need to do 
suspensions fairly frequently to keep up our skills. 

Re Steve's comments on charity--as long as we are using 
volunteers to the extent we are, *every* suspension is based 
somewhat on charity.  If this is not well understood as a current 
Alcor business policy, it should be. 

I would like to see people to concentrate on cost reduction as 
opposed to revenue increases.  Cryonics has never had a real push 
to reduce suspension cost (as opposed to storage cost) so we 
should get a lot of return here for relatively little effort. 

Thomas Donaldson writes: 

>If Alcor could be structured as an insurance company, some of 
>these issues would go away: we could meaningfully charge much 
>more for those who join late. That has proven hard to do for any 
>present cryonics society. 

The main problem here is the 2 million dollar capital requirement 
for starting a California insurance company.  However, the case 
is *so* strong that Alcor should be (or own) an insurance company 
that I believe this is only a matter of time.  This is one case 
where I think some significant fraction of the patient care fund 
should be invested i.e., as capital in a captive insurance 
company.  If we only provide insurance to suspension members for 
the purpose of their suspension funding (and charge actuarial 
based rates) this is a "can't lose" business for the patient care 
fund to be in.  (I.e., when a member goes into suspension, we 
take money out of one pocket and put it in another.) 

>I would not necessarily claim that we should NEVER freeze 
>last-minute cases. But the fees charged are way too small, 
>considering especially the small number of volunteers. 

Well, yes and no.  Suspensions are still infrequent, and the 
tendency is for *too* many volunteers to want to be involved 
because they want to keep their skills sharp.  We are going to 
have to either form teams and let them take turns, or draw names 
out of a hat.  Terminal cases have provided *most* of the recent 
suspensions, helping to pay for equipment and the like.  Naomi 
has suggested that we swap people between transport and 
suspension tasks, i.e., you only do one or the other for a given 
suspension. 

I would appreciate it if those who are thinking and proposing 
possible solutions to these problems would consider the cost and 
hassle involved in stages.  There is (most of the time) a standby 
phase, which is highly variable in length and cost; a fairly 
standard transport (including washout); and a standard suspension 
processing (including cooling in stages to LN2).  Cost for the 
first two stages is quite dependent on distance from Alcor 
central, local laws, and family support. 

Thomas made another observation in a recent phone conversation.  
There may be a significant number of people out there who count 
on signing up if they get terminal, and use this as an excuse for 
not signing up while they are healthy.  I wish I had an idea of 
how large a population this is.  It may be a significant 
percentage of Alcor's current numbers. 

I greatly appreciate Steve's and Thomas's comments.  The more 
people who are thinking about these problems the more likely we 
are to come up with workable ideas.  

Keith Henson

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