Here's how it works: If survivors request a lump-sum payment of the death benefit, Prudential opens a retained-asset account, a quasi-checking account that allows families to draw money when they are ready to spend it.So instead of sending a check for $400,000, which is what an ethical insurance company is supposed to do, Prudential just sends them a checkbook. For every day that they don't write themselves a check for 400 large, Prudential makes money. And if they spend the money over time, prudential makes even more money.
Prudential has been doing this for 45 years, now. They got the business on some sort of quasi-corrupt no-bid deal and they've hung onto it ever since, like a millstone around the necks of the families of our dead servicemen.
Ghoulish fuckers, aren't they?
2 comments:
And it's easy to get right-wing, support-the-troops types to defend this company to the bitter end. They'll cry about the poor, poor corporation and its paper-thin profit margins, and responsibility to stockholders, and providing jobs to so many people... and how big, bad Obama has all these gigantic corporations in fear over upcoming 200% taxes on everybody and how they need to be so careful.
They can't find an issue they can't politicize, and you can't find a position on any issue that's too evil for them to support.
Well, that goes along nicely with the "Dead Peasant" insurance policies some companies have taken out on unknowing employees. How wonderful that corporations are finding all these creative ways to make money from people even after they're dead. But I forget, corporations are people too.
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