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Houston | Big corporations, including banks and convenience store chains in Houston, have taken out life insurance policies on their employees and received hundreds of thousands of dollars when a worker died. The policies have become known as "dead peasant" policies, because they are taken out on low-level employees.

The practice of purchasing 'Dead Peasant Policies' was brought to public attention in Michael Moore's film: 'Capitalism: A Love Story,' 09/30/09. (photo: Capitalism: A Love Story)

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+3 # Guest 2010-02-15 00:08

How in the world does one find out if a policy has been taken out in their name? I'd rather the company I work for not have that insurance on me since they don't offer ME any kind of health insurance!

+3 # Guest 2010-02-15 04:18

What's to prevent me from hiring you, killing you and collecting?

+2 # Guest 2010-02-15 06:14

Interesting to see this article in light of an episode on CIS: Miami that aired a few weeks ago. The boss took out large life insurance policies on his employees, and one by one they were dead from what looked like an 'accident.' The police looked at the company's books and it turns out they were in financial trouble, and employees with any medical history were being 'eliminated.'
As part of health reform debate and the forthcoming bill, this issue ought to be addressed.

-7 # Guest 2010-02-15 07:36

It's a sign of our knee-jerk response orientation that the comments are not about the cost to a company of hiring, training and placing a new employee, but of murder, deception and fraud. I'm as concerned with those issues as anyone, but the insuring of employees is totally justified, and does not constitute anything shady or improper. Your mortgage company requires that you insure your house, because it's their property, not yours until it's paid off. Companies typically insure employees to help offset the cost of replacing them, not because it's a great way to add heartless profits to their bottom line. Usually.

+4 # Guest 2010-02-15 08:30

Well it seems to me the practice of insuring employees is justified in the case of key employees (partners, CEO, CFO, COO). But in the case of the rank and file the employee will probably quit before they drop dead unless of course there is an incentive for them to drop dead. In either case there really ought to be notification laws. Get real Steve.

0 # Guest 2010-02-16 09:01

Yeah -- I bet they have millions invested in those convenience store clerks. The kindly bosses pay them princely salaries, guard them from the evils of socialized medicine, keep them from the perils of Caribbean vacations and European second homes, and most of all, shelter them from the horrors of collective bargaining. You gotta have a lot of sympathy for the downtrodden CEOs.

+7 # Guest 2010-02-15 07:05

I'll bet the cocksucker who thought this one up got one helluva bonus.

+6 # Guest 2010-02-15 08:21

The companies that take out these policies actually have a huge financial incentive for their low level employees to die! The implications of this are horrendous; don't provide health insurance but take out secret life (death benefit) insurance on those same employees---sinister and logical. It's wrong to allow this practice continue.

+1 # Guest 2010-02-15 12:15

This isn't "new", and Moore didn't discover it. I heard a fairly lengthy report on this practice a few years ago, on a weekend NPR news program.
It's actually a variant of the credit default insurance policies that helped bring on the bank failures...except much less risky for the insurers.

+1 # Guest 2010-02-15 13:08

All part of the military/industrial/con-gressional-corporate.'terrorism' complex coup that began in the late 1940's (about the same time as the CIA was created), and came into full bloom after the 2000 election got stolen, and 9/11 was created and allowed to happen. The neo-con G&P'ers (greed and power addicts) wished in the late 1990's for 'another Pear Harbour', and 9/11 was their dream and plan come true. And now we have the risk management government to end all government's, or maybe all civilization, what with its constant war for profit and control mode of operating. Defrauding the populace, whether by vote and count fraud or insurance schemes is all part of the gree and power addiction package. Anything goes, as long as the billions keep flowing into designated pockets. Let's spread the word, far and wide, and over and over again: let's do whatever it takes to...UNDO THE COUP!

+2 # Guest 2010-02-15 13:34

There may be only one way left to "undo the coup". The French, in the 1790's, knew what it was. I don't like the idea of doing it their way, but this is a class war in which these corporations are literally feeding on the rest of us. It certainly requires some kind of response. Perhaps, as a current movement suggests, we need to move our money to local banks, buy from smaller local businesses/farms, use cash rather than credit as often as we can and boycott the products and services of these corporations. Starve them of their profits; support the local economy. Then, perhaps, we won't have to borrow France's guillotine.

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