Argumentative Essay On Life Insurance

Down the hospital hallway there is a 45 year old man with a terminal disease expected to die within a month. To live an additional few months longer, he needs cash quick for a treatment. He owns an asset with substantial value, but he can only use it after death. How convenient for him. In 1911, the Supreme Court made it legal to sell this asset, to anyone who is willing to buy it (Grigsby v Russell… np). A life insurance policy is not commonly thought of an asset to be used while you are still alive; however, at certain times, a life insurance policy can have more value to someone while they are alive than as a death benefit gifted to another person later. Typically, young industries that experience rapid growth in a short time period, such as that seen in the life insurance settlement industry, need innovative regulation in order to protect consumers from entering into contracts that they may not entirely understand. The life insurance settlement industry has had advocacy groups work closely with governments on the state level to ensure that the industry in subject to statutes that allow for beneficial growth. Some states such as South Carolina still need to implement legislation to ensure that constituents are capable of making …show more content…
The AIDS epidemic left many people with high-value life insurance policies and short life expectancies. The nature of the AIDS outbreak was primarily in single young otherwise healthy men who had well-paying jobs. Upon diagnosis AIDS victims were left with a very short life expectancies. The majority of these individuals didn’t have beneficiaries who were in need of the money to pay off debts after death. In this situation, there was a significant cluster of individuals who realized that the life insurance policies they possessed valued more to them as a benefit before dying than as a death benefit to someone else later. From this is where we get the term