Life Insurance and Policyholders
MANY things have been printed of late which afford healthful thinking for people on the subject of life insurance. The fact has been made evident that in very many cases the benefits of such insurance were all on the part of the company which received the premiums, and not on the part of the policy-holder who paid them. It has been made clear that the immense surplus of the largest companies was accumulated by schemes designed to get money out of the policy-holder without giving him any equivalent for the same; as, for example, by urging and enticing people to take a high-premium, “speculative” form of policy, upon which the payments would be so large that they could not be kept up, so that the policy-holder would eventually lose a large sum which he had paid in. Life insurance as conducted by the largest and most prominent companies has been shown to be a business which aims at getting money out of people primarily, and at insuring against loss only incidentally. Here is another statement, in the Washington Post, showing the care which life insurance companies take to hold on to money the policy-holder supposes will be his:— COLUMBUS, OHIO, May 15.—Sarah D. Finnegan, a Cincinnati widow, lost by a decision of the Supreme Court to-day a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance judgment against the Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association. John Finnegan, whose life was insured, found the agent’s office closed when he went to pay a premium the day it was due. He paid it the next day. It was accepted by the agent, but the home office refused to take it, and it was returned. While the matter was in dispute, Finnegan died, and the company refused to pay the policy. Mrs. Finnegan sued, and was awarded judgment by a lower court, but the Supreme Court to-day reversed that decision.