Henry Scott, an acquaintance of Strub’s, tested positive for HIV shortly after the introduction of protease inhibitors. Strub wasn’t the only person who used money from his viatical settlement to start his own business. The industry did have its bright spots, Strub notes: “There also were people who were great, particularly the brokers, who tried to get as much money for the policyholder as possible and enabled many people to realize a dream-buying a home, starting a business, whatever-or to significantly improve their last years, months, or days.” Instead, according to Strub, the buyer claimed he could “look in their eyes and get a sense of how long they will be around.” Strub says he once met a buyer who never consulted doctors about the life expectancy of the policyholders. “Some were a step from con artists, jumping into an unregulated, emerging, high-profit financial sector,” he says.
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POZ at first generated much of its revenue through advertising similar settlements to the one Strub had entered into, so he became acquainted with a few people who worked in the viatical industry. “Anyone looking at me assumed I didn’t have long to live.” Strub, a writer and activist, says he viaticated three life-insurance policies, collecting 93 percent of the death benefit on a $150,000 policy, 70 percent on a policy for $300,000, and around 50 percent on a $20,000 policy. “I was a skeletal 125 pounds, 6’1, covered in purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions,” he says. Sean Strub’s health was in stark contrast with that of the strapping men in those advertisements when he began viaticating life-insurance policies in the mid-1990s. Spirit to rejuvenate,” reads one advertisement from Legacy Benefits, a viatical-settlement brokerage. financial devastation.”Ī smaller number of viatical advertisements pictured men on vacation, hanging out on a tropical beach and watching the sun set. One ad in a 1996 issue of The Advocate markets the settlements as “cash infusion therapy,” promising “an immediate cure for one of the most damaging side effects of AIDS. Others appealed to the financial concerns stemming from exorbitant medical expenses. Some of the ads conveyed a sense of serenity, showing a park bench or a nature scene. “Exercise your options,” reads one advertisement, accompanied by a bodybuilder lifting the world above his head. The advertisements for viatical settlements in the ’80s and ’90s usually depicted a singular demographic: white men, usually fit or buff, looking perfectly well.
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Those who viaticated their policies and continue to live with HIV do so knowing that investors have long waited to collect on their deaths. Many are alive today because of protease inhibitors. “So many wanted to sell their policies and it was easy to advertise into the HIV community.”Ī wave of people viaticated their life-insurance policies when confronted with such a gruesome and fatal virus. Bryan Freeman, who brokered one of the first settlements for a person living with HIV.
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“All my first clients were HIV-positive,” says M. But viatical settlements first emerged in direct response to the AIDS crisis. An imminent death yielded a quicker return.īrokerage firms now dub these agreements “life settlements,” catering to senior citizens, the terminally ill, and those unable to maintain their policies.
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Brokers for viatical settlements advertised almost exclusively to people living with AIDS, and the industry quickly received a ghoulish reputation: Investing in a viatical settlement was a bet on another’s demise. In a viatical settlement, the holder of a life-insurance policy names a third, unrelated party as the benefactor, in exchange for immediate cash. Yet in the midst of the epidemic, a third, oft-forgotten sponsor kept these magazines afloat: the viatical-settlement industry. By the mid-’90s, pharmaceutical companies had taken over the ad pages of magazines like Out and POZ to promote protease inhibitors, a lifesaving class of HIV drugs. Early in the 1980s, as HIV swept through gay enclaves of metropolitan cities, publications like The Advocate collected advertising revenue from gay bars and bathhouses-institutions that New York City tried to shutter in response to the crisis. Flipping through LGBTQ magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, you can map the trajectory of the AIDS crisis in the United States by looking at the advertisements.