X-Message-Number: 2990
Date:  Mon, 15 Aug 94 17:38:05 
From: <>
Subject:  CRYONICS Re: Insurance

Keith F. Lynch writes:

>Perhaps a cryonics organization could get a big discount on life
>insurance by pre-buying some large number of policies, carefully
>tailored to the needs of the cryonics organization, and could then
>automatically bundle one of these policies in with each 
>membership in the organization?

We've recently looked into an idea very much in line with this 
suggestion:  group insurance for members of a cryonics 
organization.  

Answer:  no can do.  

There are very strict laws regulating insurance companies regarding 
to whom and for what they can sell group insurance.  Cryonics 
organizations don't qualify.  If we were something called a 
"fraternal benefits society" they could sell us group insurance for 
our members.  But we aren't, so they can't.

Group insurance, to qualify as such, must be something that is 
intended primarily as a benefit (i.e., a "side" benefit, or "fringe" 
benefit) for those in the group, as is the case with group life 
insurance for employees of large companies.  With cryonics 
membership organizations, the insurance pays for suspension, and 
suspensions are the main reason for the existence of the 
organization in the first place.

Other than group insurance, I can't see how a cryonics organization 
could "pre-buy" life insurance policies.  It wouldn't be in the 
insurance company's interest to sell policies for people whose health 
status is unknown to the insurance underwriter.  ("What we lose on 
individual deals we'll make up in volume!")

Actually, I really must agree with Nick Szabo on the attractiveness 
of self-insurance in general.  While it is true that there is "a lot of 
money to be made," as some of you have said, there is also a lot of 
money to be *lost.*  Complete insolvency is not something we 
could afford.  (Pun more or less intended.  :-)

If we take on the risk of insuring future cryonics patients ourselves, 
we also take on the responsibility of making sure that all of our 
members (or some large portion of them) aren't going to just pay us 
one or two year's worth of fees, only to need suspension 
immediately thereafter.  I'd bet that there are quite a few terminal 
patients out there who would be more than happy to pay a couple 
of year's dues for even a slim chance at life, if that's all it would cost 
them.  This would mean that our membership rolls would swell 
artificially because of an influx of terminal patients.

And if we took on the responsibility (and hassle) of determining 
their health (i.e., risk of death) for ourselves, the way that insurance 
companies already do, then we would basically be giving those 
terminal patients a strong incentive to lie to us.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.  To drastically paraphrase 
Mr. Szabo, "Better the insurance companies than us!"  (I.e., I'll feel 
much better if the onus for determining whether a given individual 
is healthy is left with the insurance companies.  They can afford a 
mistake or twenty.  We can't.)

Forward in all directions!

Derek Ryan
Membership Administrator
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Ph. # 602-922-9013
Email: 

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