X-Message-Number: 14815 Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 18:54:08 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: re Alcor's foreign membership Hi everyone! About Kirschner's message: Although I am a US citizen (now living overseas) and carry only US life insurance, the insurance problem faced by Kirschner should not be simply ignored. If Alcor is to grow, it should try to grow internationally, and that means it should be willing to accept foreign members. The major fault of Alcor in this issue is that it hasn't decided to let THE FOREIGN MEMBERS do the work to show that their life insurance policy will pay up when needed. Yes, Alcor may wish to verify any letters etc sent by the foreign life insurance company, but this is far less work than doing the job directly from an address which is not in the country in question. The US, too, has shonky life insurance companies. Moreover, if you get your insurance when relatively young, and need it decades later, what once was a good life insurance company may have changed into a shonky one. Not only that, but if that happens you could easily be in a situation in which you could not get new life insurance because you've developed a condition (which you did not have originally) which makes you hard or impossible to insure. This point is a major one. I will not get involved in the dispute as to how much, if any, Alcor was at fault in the way it dealt with Kirschner... although I do think Alcor might have done a little more than it did rather than simply turning him into a nonmember. Phones, fax, and email all work between the US and Germany... though I've noticed since living in the US that far fewer banks (or PEOPLE) really deal with foreign countries as casually as those based overseas. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14815