Cashing out life insurance

People near the end of their lives are too frail to work, have low incomes and often lack health insurance coverage. Consequently, these people are often under extreme financial stress - they need cash now to buy life saving treatments and but do not have enough income or liquid assets to pay mounting prescription and doctor bills. Such people are increasingly using a new financial vehicle called a viatical settlement. These settlements which first arose in the context of HIV, allow policyholders to convert their previously non-liquid life insurance policies into cash at a discount to the policies' face value. (The discount depends on life expectancy.) Despite its growing importance, there has been little scrutiny of the viatical settlements market. This dissertation fills this information gap by conducting two separate analyses of the viatical settlement market using a unique database of viatical settlements involving HIV+ patients. The first analysis, evaluates the impact of existing minimum price regulation in the viatical settlements market. These prices floors are perhaps the most controversial of the current regulations, thus a good candidate for analysis. The viatical settle