X-Message-Number: 3007
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: CRYONICS: Re: Insurance, odds, and milestones
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 94 13:16:27 +0200 (MET DST)

 (Nick Szabo) writes:
> Message-Subject: CRYONICS: Insurance, odds, and milestones
> Date: Sat, 20 Aug 1994 04:12:07 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> 
> David S. Stodolsky:
> > That is, the insurance
> > company would be able to bet that cryonics would work and they would
> > have the incentive to assist research in this direction.
> 
> The role of an insurance company is to spread risk, not merely to
> take on risk.  In this case, the risk is strongly correlated 
> across patients: if cryonics doesn't work for somes patients, either
> due to organizational or technological failure, it's much less 
> likely to work for other patients.  The insurance company would 
> have to make some bulk side-bet against cryonics to offset the risk.
> 
> There are alternative insurers in England who are sometimes willing
> to take on these kinds of bets, but I don't know if they're willing
> to go this long a term.

This same criticism can be made for life insurance: If medicine
improves, all people live longer. Also, there are tax advantages that
can be achieved by these types of insurance. For example, a large
bank in Sweden took out insurance (with its own parent company) on the
value of all homes it had morgages on. That is, it was insuring itself
against a general drop in housing prices. The insurance payments were
tax deductable, so the state was in effect carrying the burden of the
cost. The losses, however, had prices dropped, would have been in profits
and directly out of the bottom line. 


David S. Stodolsky, PhD      Internet: 
Peder Lykkes Vej 8, 4. tv.               Internet: 
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark           Voice + Fax: + 45 32 97 66 74

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