Insurance companies are not your friend. The only thing they care about is syphoning as much money from you as possible.
The stupid part is that they’re allowed to make exclusions to a “life” insurance policy – the idea is that they pay out when you’re no longer alive. If they take your premiums, they should have to pay out when you die – the only exception should be if you’re provably alive.
My understanding has always been that if they refuse, and it’s for something other than suicide or something obvious like fraud, that they had to return the premiums paid with interest (interest being sweet fuck all for the most part).
I don’t know if I’m just mistaken, if something has changed, or there’s more to the story.
They shouldn’t pay if you kill yourself. There’s an obvious reason why.
I’m not sure if you are implying M. Jatzen killed himself through overdose or not.
Regardless, the issue in this case hase nothing to do with the mechanism of death. The two insurers where aware of the drug use and continued coverage.
“The Court of Appeal ruled that “the insurers properly denied coverage because Mr. Jantzen died as a result of committing the crime of possession of the cocaine that he consumed.””
Presumably this implies that insurance payouts are not required in any case where a claimant was committing a crime.
Die while jaywalking? No payout. Die while torrenting a movie? No payout. Die while turn right on Montréal Island? No payout. Spill blood on your cash when you die? That’s defacing currency. No payout.
No, I’m only pointing out the obvious exception to life insurance in general.
In the medical field, they’re starting to refer to deaths due to adulterated drugs as ‘poisoning’, rather than ‘overdose’. The implication is that people are merely trying to get high, but because of a lack of safe supply, their drugs may contain powerful narcotics like fentanyl, it’s effectively unintentional, not a deliberate attempt to consume too much.
Suicide is a risk in life as with any other ailment. Most plans won’t pay out during the first couple of years, but do after that. So clearly the insurance companies themselves count it an acceptable risk for them. Maybe in that context you would care to elaborate?
Suicide is a symptom of mental illness in the absence of an obvious physical ailment like cancer, ALS, etc. We shouldn’t stigmatize mental illness further by drawing arbitrary lines when the result is the same.
We shouldn’t incentivize it with a payout.
