Viatical Settlements
Has anyone ever heard of viatical settlements? I had never heard that term until I was watching Medium last night.A viatical settlement allows you to invest in another person’s life insurance policy. With a viatical settlement, you purchase the policy (or part of it) at a price that is less than the death benefit of the policy. When the seller dies, you collect the death benefit.
Your return depends upon the seller’s life expectancy and the actual date he or she dies. If the seller dies before the estimated life expectancy, you may receive a higher return. But if the seller lives longer than expected, your return will be lower.
We go along day by day, living our lives, and most of us hardly take into account that death could happen at any moment. When death does finally knock on our door, we kick and fight and scream and beg for a few more mortal moments here on earth. We would do anything, even if it means selling our soul by taking out this viatical settlement.
There is one good thing that comes from this viatical settlement. In many cases, cancer patients need lots of medication and sometimes these meds are experimental which means they are not covered by their health plans. Since these drugs are experimental, they are very costly. By selling your life insurance policy to an investor, the investor gives you stipends to cover drug and other medical costs.
But what about the families? The policy is intended to provide for your family in the event that you pass away. If you agree to a viatical settlement, your investor gets your money. Not your family.
This just seems like you are selling your soul for a few more moments. Call me cold hearted, but I don’t think that it’s fair. Learning about this really disturbs me. And think about all those sleazy investors buying the policy’s of sick individuals, probably privately praying that they don’t live to get the full benefits from their policy.
2 Comments so far
money…..everyone wants it.
While working in a hospital I saw a number of these activated. The original intent, I believe, and the reason I saw it happening was because the patients’ families did not need or did not care about the money and it seemed more important to use that money to help pay for experimental chemo or any of the zillion other things that devastate these patients financially. It always relieved a lot stress for the patients. With everything they are going through, do they really need to worry about money? I understand your thoughts on this and I am sure it is abused but it has also been extremely helpful in the situations I have seen it used.