3/22/12.
Joseph Epstein:
"I recently bought something called catastrophic health insurance for my college-student granddaughter—a policy that has a high deductible but is in place lest, God forfend, she needs to undergo a lengthy and expensive hospital stay. The insurance agent who sold it to me is a man named Jack Gross, whom I occasionally see walking around the streets of my neighborhood and who always greets me, often with a new joke. Being an insurance salesman and having me there in his office, Jack couldn’t resist asking me if my wife and I have assisted-living insurance, a policy designed for older people that pays for caregivers (or minders, as the English, more precisely, call them), thus allowing those suffering from dementia or other devastating conditions to avoid nursing homes. Assisted-living insurance is very expensive, especially if one first acquires it in one’s 70s, the decade my wife and I are now in.
“
Thanks all the same, Jack, but we have no need for assisted-living insurance,” I said. “We have pistols.”
“Great,” he replied, nicely on beat. “I just hope when the time comes to use them you are able to find them.”
The problem with that amusing response is that it has an uncomfortably high truth content..."
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/old-age-and-other-laughs/
Joseph Epstein:
"I recently bought something called catastrophic health insurance for my college-student granddaughter—a policy that has a high deductible but is in place lest, God forfend, she needs to undergo a lengthy and expensive hospital stay. The insurance agent who sold it to me is a man named Jack Gross, whom I occasionally see walking around the streets of my neighborhood and who always greets me, often with a new joke. Being an insurance salesman and having me there in his office, Jack couldn’t resist asking me if my wife and I have assisted-living insurance, a policy designed for older people that pays for caregivers (or minders, as the English, more precisely, call them), thus allowing those suffering from dementia or other devastating conditions to avoid nursing homes. Assisted-living insurance is very expensive, especially if one first acquires it in one’s 70s, the decade my wife and I are now in.
“
Thanks all the same, Jack, but we have no need for assisted-living insurance,” I said. “We have pistols.”
“Great,” he replied, nicely on beat. “I just hope when the time comes to use them you are able to find them.”
The problem with that amusing response is that it has an uncomfortably high truth content..."
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/old-age-and-other-laughs/
1 comment:
Thanks all the same, Jack, but we have no need for assisted-living insurance,” I said. “We have pistols.
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