Comments on: More Innovation from Wall Street: Securitized Viaticals

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:39:00 +0000

isn’t that kinda like insider info

Yes, it could be a lot like insider trading. Particularly if medical transcription software had ‘reporters’ written into it to send ‘data’ to some collector function designed to aggregate the data and then use it to price the ‘financial products’.

Reprehensible.

And zarf@37: the big problem with life insurance is life insurance; don’t mix it up and confound it with **health** insurance.

Any process that ‘increases the sale value of a life insurance policy for such people’ — that inadvertantly creates incentives for anyone to be worth ‘more dead than alive’ is ghoulish, cruel, stupid, and venal.

People need health insurance to maintain their good health.
The may need ‘life insurance’ policies as part of their financial planning, but no one needs to enable a system whereby it is profitable for Wall Street to make more money through ‘more, more frequent deaths’ than by helping people remain healthy and productive.

This is one of those milestones, in which it is clear that the system of debt capitalism is not working. After all, any economy that finds itself in such desperate straits that it creates ‘financial instruments’ to bet on the early deaths of people is not sustainable over time.

By: polyblog

polyblog — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:22:57 +0000

I actually think that linking this information (the real death panels) to health care reform (not insurance reform) may benefit our side. How much more blatant can it be that the elites are using us as currency for their luxuries, excesses and, of course, POWER? Is there a progressive spinmeister out there who can turn this into a “phrase” that would get us a massive demonstration on Washington, D.C. for single-payer?

I’d go!

By: zarf

zarf — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:05:54 +0000

The big problem with life insurance is that you may need money now while you are still alive. Any process that increases the sale value of a life insurance policy for such people is to be applauded. Not a time or place to be squeamish.

By: Gitcheegumee

Gitcheegumee — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:42:29 +0000

And, unless I misunderstand, with Goldman Sach’s tie to one of the BIGGEST providers of info on Medicare records,Emdeon@26 and 28-upthread- isn’t that kinda like insider info-or am I misreading?

By: Nathan Aschbacher

Nathan Aschbacher — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:49:20 +0000

These kinds of investments have been around for a while, my father dabbled in them a little bit back in the 90’s on the advice of his corporate financial advisor. After about 3 months the perversity of it got to him and his business partner, so they divested from them ASAP.

To him it felt like shorting on somebody’s life, and his principled opposition to shorting in the market extended to actual people the minute the dots were all connected.

Securitization of these things is repugnant at best.

This creates a OMGFINGXBOX-HUGE problem in the propensity for self-dealing and bad faith investment; doesn’t it? Where somebody’s actual health insurance policy is the original asset, and the life insurance policy becomes tantamount to credit default swap to hedge against the payouts on the health policy? If there is ever a situation where there isn’t impossibly strict separation of interests between those two policy providers, these won’t be “death panels;” what you’ll have would be tantamount to private for-profit death squads. Literally hunting people down to capitalize on their death.

By: Gitcheegumee

Gitcheegumee — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:36:20 +0000

Viaticals are victuals for vultures.

The vultures are the fattest where the carrion is the most plentiful.

By: Mile23

Mile23 — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:35:56 +0000

It has to be a hoax.

By: DrDick

DrDick — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:17:57 +0000

I see Wall Street has finally found its natural calling, death pools.

By: Gitcheegumee

Gitcheegumee — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:04:39 +0000

Don’t the banks write off the cost of the premiums,and the interests off the loans,too?

By: Frank33

Frank33 — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:01:48 +0000

A “public option” would be very costly to Green Soylent. But we know Paulson and Blankfein were on the phone to each other more than teenagers in puppy love. That got GS $700000000000000 or so.

So I am thinkng that GS will not allow a Public Option or national health care under any circumstances.