Oh, Betty White. Even at age 90, is there anything you do that isn’t adorable and funny? Well, you could endorse the Lifeline Program. Lifeline promotes the sale of so-called viatical settlements under which a life insurance policy holder essentially sells the death benefit of his or her policy for upfront money while still alive. In this way, viaticals can genuinely benefit terminally ill individuals in desperate need of cash. But someone — an investor — has to take the other side of the deal by fronting the money and paying the insurance premiums while the policy holder is still alive, and that’s where viaticals get weird. Such an investor is essentially betting that the policy holder will die before the investment costs grow larger than the value of the death benefit — and few investors are qualified to weigh the risks of such bets. (Never mind the murky ethics of taking the bet.) As you might expect, programs like this have come under heavy scrutiny. Many similar companies have been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for underestimating the life expectancies of policy holders.
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Betty White for The Lifeline Program
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