Here’s how desperate Georgia’s financial situation has become: Legislative leaders have introduced a bill that would enable the state’s pension systems to buy what is known as “dead peasants insurance” to shore up the funding of the their plans. It sounds suspiciously like a Ponzi scheme could be in the works here.
Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans) and Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek) have quietly introduced HB 1380, which would provide for the state’s retirement systems to buy mass life insurance coverage for current and retired state employees.
As those employees die off, the proceeds of the insurance policies would be paid off not to the survivors of the deceased employees but into the coffers of the state pension funds.
HB 1380 declares that state government, as well as any local government, “has an insurable interest in any individual who is an employee of the state or political subdivision and in any individual who is a retired employee and a member of a public retirement system.”
The bill, which is now in the House Appropriations Committee, would authorize the governor or any local government to issue RFPs and then select a “qualified insurer” to issue the life insurance policies. The state would pay the premiums for these policies, but would also be the beneficiary for any benefits paid out when the insured employee dies.
This is a money-making tactic often used in corporate America. Here’s how financial columnist Liz Pullam Weston described it –
Such corporate-owned life insurance is also big business:
* Companies pay a whopping $8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage, according to the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group.
* The policies make up more than 20% of the all the life insurance sold each year.
* Companies expect to reap more than $9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. The policies are treated as whole life policies. So, companies can borrow against the policies (though the IRS won’t let them write off the interest). And the death benefits are tax-free.
Hundreds of companies — including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie — have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank-and-file workers.
These policies, nicknamed dead janitors or dead peasants insurance, soared in popularity after many states cleared the way for them in the 1980s. Congress recently tried to crack down on the practice, to the howls of the insurance industry — which earlier this year managed to derail reforms.
The policies have generated lawsuits by survivors who got little or nothing when insured workers died.
HB 1380 has already caught the attention of teacher groups, who are skeptical of the proposed legislation.
“If there is extra money in the state coffers, let’s use it to stop furloughs, not gamble on insurance policies,” said Tim Callahan of PAGE (the Professional Association of Georgia Educators). “This idea is right up there with the state buying lottery tickets to cover its pension obligations.”
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