X-Message-Number: 2988 From: (Nick Szabo) Subject: CRYONICS: Insurance & Financial Risk Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 02:34:42 -0700 (PDT) Cryonics and insurance companies have opposite financial needs. Cryonics organizations, _especially_ patient care organizations, need to have as _low_ a financial risk profile as is possible. Low financial risk translates directly into stability and longevity of the organization. Cryonics companies want to get rid of as many unpredictable costs as is economically feasible. That means, for example, trading off the risk of lawsuits to liability insurers, and unpredictable suspension costs to life insurance companies. The role of the insurance companies is to take on these risks and spread them around widely. Cryonicists mostly can't predict when suspension costs will be incurred, and usually spread that risk across a huge population of non-cryonicists, via life insurance. We are extremely fortunate that this service is available. The situation is vastly superior to a situation where cryonics organizations try to take on this risk. Given a viable alternative, I would absolutely not initiate a long term relationship, either an expensive to terminate membership or (even more emphatically) long term care, with a cryonics organization that took on, implicitly or explicitly, the high risks of running a small life insurance pool. I am also quite dubious of patient care organizations and trust funds that are exposed to the liabilities of the deanimation and suspension process. I look forward to more progress in unbundling and (where possible, even at great cost) obtaining liability insurance. I'm curious about the prospects of liability insurance for the various phases of the cryonics operation that are exposed to risk of lawsuit, and welcome more experienced comments about that topic. Nick Szabo Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2988