Life Partners, Inc. is a company who places wagers on when you’ll become worm food. They buy your life insurance policy, hand over some money, and wait for the credits to roll. In the case of this woman who was given two years to live, but hasn’t cooperated by croaking, they’re pissed and are trying to renege on the deal. Bastards. I hope she wins the suit and lives to be 100.
What are they grousing about? They couldn’t BUY better publicity. It’s like a casino focusing its advertizing on the rare winner rather than the majority loser.
Ask me, they initiated this lawsuit as a way to cash in on that publicity. I bet they asked her to be a spokesmodel, she said no, and this is an end run.
Her annual life insurance costs $26,000?!?!
Just as well she did sell the policy or she wouldn’t be able to afford the premiums herself!
Still, a contract is a contract, you can’t back out just because you don’t like what happened. The company needs to suck it up…they would have made a 66% profit had she died on schedule, with those kind of profit margins, I can only imagine that digging up the cash to support her won’t be a problem for them.
No, Irishgirl:
Her health- and life- insurance cost 26K now.
Fuck these leaches. I hope the girl wins.
Sam
WTF? It’s bloody life insurance! It’s a wager based on acturial tables. And from time to time, people defy the tables. It’s a risk of the business.
Reminds me of the guy who entered into a contract with Jeanne Calment to pay her in exchange for the right to take over her apartment when she died. He had no way of knowing, of course, that Calment would live to be 122 years old. He died first and his widow had to continue the payments.
It wasn’t that she defied the tables, the tables changed. When they signed her up having AIDS may as well have been a death sentence. New medicine cam along and they got screwed. Time for them to open a nice frothy bottle of Suck It Up.
Oh, how many pieces of this piss me off? Let count a few.
First.
AIDS still has some sort of stigma? Sorry, even I as one of the resident right-wing douchebags in the minds of some around here, cannot comprehend how it’s any more a stigma than cancer. Who the fuck is giving her shit about this? I’d like to bet against their life insurance, and I’ll double down if I can get an address or two. (Note to mods: Not really, a little hyperbole)
Well, see, that’s why it’s called gambling. You get the high payoff potential because of the substantial risk. And it is gambling. There is no sure thing in life. These people must be the ones buying the penis pills hoping to grow a dick while waiting for the Nigerian warlord’s widow to send the check. :rolleyes:
This is why every single home in the country should be able to trace a caller directly to their home. We’ve all heard the horror stories of basically anonymous creditors harrassing people with threats and intimidation. She doesn’t owe these people shit!
Exactly. And who the fuck are these American investors of this American company??? I swear when I first heard of this story I thought it had to be some 3rd world firm.
I have no problem with the concept. If a man or woman is single with no dependants or family, what good is a life insurance policy? Cash in, I say. But at it’s base, you’re betting a person dies before the cost for care exceeds the payout. It’s a gamble. Don’t fucking pull this shit when you lose.
They set aside $5500 for the premiums. So fucking what? It wasn’t her responsibility to determine how much they earmarked. It was their responsibility to pay it!
“Seller shall have no further liability for payment” means that you, in your own contract, agree to pay it. And the fact that the life insurance and health insurance are tied together, means you are responsible for both. If you didn’t know that was the deal, maybe you should donkey-punch the lawyers that continue to give a bad name to all lawyers. After all, it appears they are the same lawyers counter-suing (if they haven’t filed yet, I can gurantee they will) to cover their own fuck-up.
You lost the bet, pay up. Seeing that they’re based in New Jersey, maybe someone there can enlighten them on the ramifications of reneging on a bet. I hear some people around there frown on it a bit.
No, dipshit. The contract is an obligation. That’s the point of a contract. And if you’re paying the premiums out of “goodwill”, I suspect your shareholders would like a word with you.
Again, the two were inseperable. You fucked up. You either didn’t know they were directly tied to each other (in which case your lawyers are to blame for not researching the matter) or you’re trying to weasel out of your obligation (more likely in this case.)
Unless someone dies.
Fucking worthless douchebags.
contra proferentem
Easy for you to say!
That’s not easy for anyone to say.
[
](http://insurance.cch.com/rupps/contra-proferentem.htm)Or, in the words of the immortal Archie Bunker, “Ipso fatso I’m right and you’re wrong!” 
All morality aside and looking at things from a purely capitalist standpoint, the cost of this account justifies spending an exorbitant fee to get out of it. They *can * get out if it, it just depends on how much they are willing to spend or risk. The higher her medical bills go, the more they are likely to be willing to spend or risk. They could offer her cash to release them from the contract, but she would have to be nuts to accept it. They would have to give her a couple mil before she could justify the kind of financial security they’re already giving her for free. They wouldn’t give her that, it doesn’t make sense. (What if they cut her a check and she got hit by a car the next day? Talk about grim irony! 
)
That said, they’re going about this entirely wrong. They should be using her as a testimonial and writing the money off as advertising budget. All that getting this account will bring them is bad publicity and enemies. I agree, they need to suck it up.
Say, who do I sue when the S&P 500 tanks?
[hijack]I remember seeing a movie about this exact same scenario. Of course, it went sour when the lawyers, losing their shirts because of the unforseen success of the AIDS cocktails, decided to kill off one of the clients, who ended up to be scamming the lawyers with her fake fatal illness, I think .
Anybody else remember this movie?[/hijack]
And I hope the vultures lose their case!
Ah yes, the so-called viatical deals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viatical
I wrote an article about these grim and greedy money-grubbing vultures for my local weekly alternative newspaper sometime in the early 90s.
I can still recall the slimy feeling I had when I did an in-person interview with the president and VP of one of these companies.
Needless to say, I have no sympathy for Life Partners, Inc.
For my article, I also interviewed an AIDS patient who made a deal with a viatical company.
Reading this thread makes me wonder how he’s doing now…
[Navin R. Johnson]
Ah, so it’s a profit deal…
[/Navin R. Johnson]
Look, this company is obviously behaving in a shitty manner, but I don’t think that the mere idea of the industry is, “slimy.” If I were facing a serious terminal illness and wondering how the hell I was going to make a copay for a $30,000/year AIDS cocktail, I’d be damn happy to sign away my life insurance benefits that will do exactly nothing for me when I’m dead in exchange for money now.
Agreed, Life Partners needs to suck it up, but I think that this is actually a pretty good idea for an industry. Nobody is being forced into using their services.
I agree with threemae. Back in the day, this was a win-win proposition. Spy magazine did an interesting article about this around fifteen years ago. The called them “death futures.”
Me too. Forget medical bills - if I was told I had three months to live, I’d want to experience a few things and not worry about money. I’d hate to have to work the last three months of my life because I needed to keep a money flow. One of these businesses would be my first phone call.