In the 19th century, most undertakers made furniture or cabinets. They expanded their lines to include wooden coffins or caskets. The difference between a coffin and a casket is the shape – coffins taper at the feet and head, with a distinctive six-sided configuration.
Then these entrepreneurs offered to “undertake” services for the grieving families, hence the term undertaker. They would place the body in a casket, take it to the cemetery, dig the grave and fill the grave (or supervise that activity), and perhaps place a marker.
The advent of embalming, and its use during the Civil War, forever changed the funeral industry in the U.S. Dr. Thomas Holmes, one of the founding fathers of embalming, experimented with various fluids while working as a doctor and coroner’s assistant in New York City during the 1840s and 1850s. He’s also considered as the inventor of the injection pump for the arterial method of embalming.
The movie The Shootist, is set in 1900 Reno, Nevada, a time of great change in U.S. and the funeral industry. The undertaker, Hezekiah Beckum, played by John Carradine, makes an offer to John Bernard Books, a renowned shootist played by John Wayne. Books has advanced prostate cancer. Ironically, this was John Wayne’s last film, after which he died of lung cancer.
John Carradine plays undertaker Hezekiah Beckum in the film, The Shootist
Beckum offers this proposition: “I’m prepared to offer you embalming by the most scientific methods; a bronze coffin guaranteed good for a century, regardless of the climatic or geological conditions; my best hearse; the minister of your choice; and the presence of at least two mourners; a headstone of the finest carerra marble, and a plot in size and location befitting your status, sir; and perpetual care of the grounds.”
Books asks, “How much?” Beckum replies, “Why nothing sir, for the privilege!”
Books responds, “No, I mean how much are you going to make on the deal? Aw, Beckum, you’re going to do to me what they did to John Wesley Hardin. You’re going to lay me out, let the public come by to gawk at me for 50 cents a head, 10 cents for the children. When the curiosity peters out, you’re going to stuff me in a gunny sack and stick me in a hole, while you hurry to the bank with your loot.”
In the deal they strike, Beckum gives Books $50 for the honor of making the final arrangements.
The deceased John Wesley Hardin, 1895
In another scene in The Shootist, Books, like John Wesley Hardin, says that he never killed anyone who did not need killing and that he always shot to save his own life.
Hardin, a notorious outlaw and gunslinger, did kill a great number of men (27 to 42 – exact figures are in dispute). He went to jail for killing an officer, and got out 17 years later in 1894. Hardin was gunned down while shooting dice, shot through the back of the head.
John Wesley Hardin’s funeral took place on August 21, 1895 in El Paso, Texas. It cost $77.50 and was paid for by Beulah M’Rose, a prostitute who Hardin took up with in his later years and helped co-write his memoir.
The El Paso Herald noted that hundreds of curious people filed through the funeral parlor to get a last look at the famous outlaw. It didn’t mention if the undertakers charged the public for the privilege.
(Cited from the book John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas by Leon Claire Metz.)
Filed under: Trends in Death Care | Tags: cremation, funerals, green burial
Earth Day is Sunday, April 22. You can go green and save money while saving the planet with your final arrangements! Did you know these interesting facts about green burial, traditional funerals and cremation?
Resource Usage
Every year, traditional funerals utilize enough metal to build a Golden Gate Bridge and enough concrete to build a two-lane highway from New York to Detroit — resources simply buried in the ground, every single year.
This is based on information compiled by Mary Woodsen, a science writer for ten years at Cornell University. In 2002, she surveyed mortuary schools and funeral directors on the amount of resources they use annually and calculated from there. She believes these careful calculations provide a conservative estimate and the figures could actually be higher.
Annually, more than 827 thousand gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid is pumped into bodies buried in the ground — toxic chemicals that eventually leak into the earth.
Every year, conventional burials utilize over 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete for vaults; more than 90 thousand tons of steel and 27 hundred tons of copper and bronze for caskets; and 14 thousand tons of steel for underground vaults.
Cremation – Not So Green
Cremation isn’t as environmentally-friendly as you might think – it has a HUGE carbon footprint. A typical flame based cremation can use approximately 25 therms of natural gas to generate 2.5 million BTUs to process one body. That generates 532.4 pounds (242 kilograms) of CO2 emissions in the cremation process.
To put that in perspective, I have solar photovoltaic panels on my house here in sunny Albuquerque, New Mexico. The monitoring system tells me how much CO2 I’m offsetting by generating my own electricity from the sun’s energy. I would have to run my 4.05 kilowatt solar panel system for 14 sunny days to offset ONE cremation.
The Cremation Association of North America (CANA) said that there were 930,429 cremations in the U.S. in 2009. That would mean to offset all of those cremations with my one solar panel system, it would take 13,026,006 days. More than 13 million days – how many years is that?
The number of cremations is skyrocketing due to the economy and changing preferences. CANA estimates indicate the annual one million mark for cremations may be reached this year. Will you be contributing to the generation of greenhouse gasses?
Backyard Burial
One of the benefits of cremation is that you can bury a loved one in your back yard, in a garden, or under a tree. For a full body burial at home, you would need to own a certain number of acres (per local zoning ordinances) and can prove a burial won’t affect the water table. You also will have to include mention of the buried body (or bodies) should you sell the property.
The New Eco-Cremation
Some funeral homes are starting to offer a new disposition system called alkaline hydrolysis that uses very little energy to dissolve bodies into a sterile, coffee-colored solution. It can be safely poured into streams, onto land, or even down the drain. This may be the wave of the future, as revolutionary as cremation was 50 years ago.
Religions with Green Burial
There are two religions that have funeral traditions that ensure a green burial: Judaism and Islam. Green burial fosters returning to the earth as naturally as possible. Both religions avoid embalming, the body is dressed in cotton or linen clothing that’s biodegradable, and the body is either placed in a shroud or soft wood casket in contact with the earth.
With Jewish or Muslim burial in the U.S., some cemeteries will require liners over the body or casket to prevent the earth from sinking over time. However the body or casket is in contact with the earth. It’s the closest you can get to a green burial in a conventional cemetery.
In fact, when my husband and I preplanned our funerals, he chose a wicker basket casket, like the one pictured above. He does the laundry in our family, so it’s very appropriate, kosher, and green!
Have a happy, healthy Earth Day. Do your part to go green.
I recently gave a Toastmasters talk about cremation trends titled The Crème de la “Crem.” You can watch the YouTube video (would love to get your feedback!) or read the written version of the talk below.
In the film, Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood, there’s a scene set in London. Ten-year-old Marcus is attending the funeral of his twin brother, Jason, who was killed in a car accident. Marcus, his mother, and five other people have gathered in a gray church-like chapel. It has wooden pews and tall stained glass windows. This chapel is actually a crematory, or “crem” as the Brits call it.
A minister comes out and says a few quick words about Jason being in heaven and his remains being committed to dust. At a nod of the minister’s head, the coffin sinks down through the floor to the crematorium below. Even before Marcus and his mother leave the chapel, a huge East Indian family hustles in for the next funeral.
Now, the film Hereafter is a crashing bore, yet this scene intrigued me. Do the English really treat their living and dead in this way? I posed the question to the Good Funeral Guide Coffee House, an online discussion group of celebrants in the U.K. In fact, Clint Eastwood got it right.
The U.K. has a cremation rate of 72%, almost three-quarters of the population. Some say it’s because they live on a tiny island and burial space is scarce. These “crems” are used frequently. Funerals in these chapels are almost always rushed affairs. The more families moved through, the more money can be made. It’s hard to slow down the proceedings to allow for a meaningful, healing farewell ceremony.
Thank goodness it hasn’t come to this in the United States. However, more and more people here are choosing cremation. A recent report by CANA, the Cremation Association of North America, noted that the average national rate of those opting for cremation has jumped. It was 15% in 1985, 34% in 2007 and almost 41% in 2010. CANA projects a 50% cremation rate will be achieved by 2018.
In some parts of the U.S., that rate has already been exceeded. The Pacific and Mountain regions, including New Mexico, have already reached a 59% rate of cremation.
According to a recent New York Times story, a big reason for this boom in cremations is cost cutting. In these tough economic times, people are looking for ways to save money any way they can, including final disposition.
The story focused on a woman named Toni Kelly who battled lymphoma for four years. She worried that her costly chemotherapy treatments would destroy the family’s finances. In fact, she died on September 29 leaving her family with two hundred thousand dollars in medical debt. Before she died, though, she planned and saved money on her funeral expenses by being cremated.
Ms. Kelly’s disposition cost about sixteen hundred dollars, including a death notice, a death certificate and an urn. This is a fraction of the ten to sixteen thousand dollars typically spent on a traditional funeral and burial. The cheapest direct cremation you can get in Albuquerque today is about nine hundred dollars. The Social Security death benefit is two hundred and fifty five dollars, which paid the costs of a funeral in 1937. Today it might get you a decent sized obituary in the Albuquerque Journal.
And this was the first cremation in Toni Kelly’s family. Chances are, it won’t be that family’s last one. According to CANA, once a family has done a cremation, that family will likely cremate again. Ironically, the cremation rate is higher for individuals with more education and higher family income. Asian populations and those in urban communities also cremate at a higher rate. African-Americans have a lower cremation rate, preferring the traditions related to funerals.
When I did my 30 Funerals in 30 Days back in October, many of the creative memorial services were made possible by cremation.
Sidney Stone’s remains were front and center at the jazz-themed celebration of his life at the German American Club. The memorial service, complete with a New Orleans second line parade with participants holding umbrellas, was held three months after he died. You can’t wait three months to hold a party with a body.
At Erika Langholf’s celebration of life, her cremated remains were part of a Southwest-themed display festooned with the red chile ristras she loved to make. Her ashes were presented in a beautiful urn of Himalayan rock salt. It wouldn’t have been the same with a casket plunked into the middle of this display.
Sam Houston’s ashes were there at Balloon Fiesta Park early on the Saturday morning his family and friends held a mini-balloon fiesta in his honor. His remains were later scattered from a balloon over the red rocks near Gallup. Try doing that with a body.
These three creative examples were probably not dictated by economics. Yet, just the other day, I saw an obituary in the newspaper that read, “In lieu of flowers, please make donations to William’s memorial at Wells Fargo Bank.”
It has come to the point where families are asking for donations to pay for memorial services. One insurance executive I interviewed said he has seen collection jars at funerals.
The rate of cremation will continue to grow in the United States. People choose this disposition method for different reasons. What’s the right choice for you and your family? The only way to answer that question is to get educated about funeral and cremation costs, make some plans about what would be meaningful, and figure out how you will pay those expenses.
Whether you are concerned about cost, convenience, or creativity, think ahead to make your final exit the crème de la “crem.”
Filed under: Trends in Death Care | Tags: alkaline hydrolysis, cremation, green burial
The Science Channel on MSNBC.com recently ran an interesting story on eight burial alternatives that are becoming more common. LiveScience Senior Writer Stephanie Pappas wrote this great piece that covered alkaline hydrolysis (also called resomation), natural burial (a.k.a. green burial), eternal reefs, cryonics, space burial, mummification, plastination (preserving bodies for education or exhibitions), and freeze drying.
I’ve written quite a bit about alkaline hydrolysis, cryonics, and green burial. Here are some bits from the story about the other alternatives.
Eternal Reefs
For those who prefer to nourish a more aquatic environment after death, there’s also the Eternal Reef option. Georgia-based Eternal Reefs creates artificial reef material out of a mixture of concrete and human cremains (the crushed bone left over from cremations). These heavy concrete orbs are then placed in areas where reefs need restoration, attracting fish and other organisms that turn the remains into an undersea habitat.
Cremation isn’t as green as natural burial due to the combustion process, Harris said, but he is a fan of Eternal Reef burials.
“It’s a terrific opportunity not just to return to an aquatic environment, but to produce new life under the sea,” he said.
Space Burial
If cryonics sounds too expensive, but you’d still like the afterlife to smack of sci-fi, you can always get some of your ashes shot into space. Your cremated remains will hitch a ride on a rocket already headed for the stars, a journey that is more symbolic than practical: Because of the high cost of spaceflight, only 1 to 7 grams (0.04 to 0.25 ounces) of remains are launched.
According to Celetis Memorial Spaceflights, a company that offers the postmortem flights, a low-orbit journey that lets your cremains experience zero gravity before returning to Earth starts at $995. A chance to orbit Earth and eventually burn up in the atmosphere runs around $3,000. Dedicated space-lovers can have themselves launched to the moon or into deep space for $10,000 and $12,500, respectively.
Mummification
It’s not just for ancient Egyptians anymore. A religious organization called Summum, founded in 1975, offers mummification services to both people and pets. Before his death in 2008, Summum’s founder Corky Ra told CBS News that at least 1,400 people had signed up for eventual mummification.
Summum’s representatives are currently not granting media requests, but Ra told CBS that the price of human mummificationstarts at $63,000. Like believers in cryonics, Ra and those like him hope that their preserved DNA will enable future scientists to clone them and give them (or at least their genes) a second shot at life. Ra put his money where his mouth was: After he died, he was mummified and is now encased in bronze in Summum’s pyramid in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Plastination
Much like mummification, plastination involves preserving the body in a semi-recognizable form. Invented by anatomist Gunther von Hagens, plastination is used in medical schools and anatomy labs to preserve organ specimens for education. But von Hagens has taken the process one step further, creatingexhibits of plastinated bodies posed as if frozen in the midst of their everyday activities. According to the Institute for Plastination, thousands have signed up to donate their bodies for education and display.
Freeze-drying
The newest comer on the eco-burial stage is a process called Promession, or put more plainly, freeze-drying. Invented by Swedish marine biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, the process involves immersing the corpse in liquid nitrogen, which makes it very brittle. Vibrations shake the body apart and the water is evaporated away in a special vacuum chamber. Next, a separator filters out any mercury fillings or surgical implants, and the powdered remains are laid to rest in a shallow grave.
With a shallow burial, oxygen and water can mix with the powdered remains, turning them into compost.
No one has yet been sent off into the afterlife the Promession way, but Promessa, the company developing the service, now has a licensed branch in the United Kingdom. There’s no hint of when the option might land on American shores.
CBS News recently ran a story about videos that detail end-of-life treatment options and give patients real-world examples to better inform their choices. These videos provide an eye-opening look at what really happens when your medical directives say “Do everything in your power to save me.”
25 percent of all Medicare spending, more than 100 billion dollars, is spent in the last year of life. Every year, patients are getting expensive, aggressive treatments that don’t save lives, and may actually prolong misery.
The videos come from the Nous Foundation, Inc. and Advanced Care Planning Decisions. The non-profit organization consists of a group of clinicians and researchers who want to empower patients with video decision aids. Their video support tools are carefully crafted after undergoing rigorous review by leading experts in medicine, geriatrics, oncology, palliative care, ethics, and decision-making.
Video decision aids effectively communicate and inform patients about their options at the end of life. ACP Decisions Patient Education Videos help patients make informed decisions with a series of narrative videos designed to educate patients about advance care planning and end-of-life care options.
This patient-centered supplemental tool reinforces information introduced by the clinician. The videos empower patients and their families to make informed decisions consistent with their values. They give insights into what really happens in the final days of an illness.
And what patients are seeing is giving them pause about resuscitation and intubation (being put on a ventilator for breathing).
The videos are making treatment options more real and less abstract for patients. Studies show that most patients who watch these videos change their minds about what they want and choose less aggressive care.
Palliative care, designed to make the patient comfortable in their final days, is so much more humane than inflicting treatments that only extend pain. I hope everyone who faces a terminal diagnosis (something we are all headed for at some point) has a chance to see these videos.
After all, as Wayne Dyer said, life itself is a terminal disease.
Filed under: From Death to Funeral, Trends in Death Care | Tags: communications, funerals, hospice, obituaries
Obituaries, a traditional communications vehicle to spread the news about death and funerals, generally fall into two categories: news obituaries and classified obituaries. There is a third type, the display ad obituary, which I’m seeing more of lately.
News obituaries are stories written by journalists about someone who has made some notable contribution to humanity or the local community before they died. A reporter will interview one or more people to prepare the story, and an editor will review the piece. The family generally does not get to see the article before it runs.
Classified obituaries, paid listings placed by the family, are like other classified ads for yard sales or jobs, except they get their own separate section in the newspaper. These can be as long and detailed as the family wishes to make it, although the more you say, the more you pay.
And the newspaper does not edit what is written. If the obit is submitted with typos or incorrect information, it runs as is. Some newspapers allow the addition of a photo with the obit. Yet, they are still the typical narrow columns you see in the classified ads.
And then, rarely, there are display ad obituaries. These can appear anywhere in the newspaper, scattered among the big ads for local merchants’ sales. Display ads typically cost more than classified ads, priced by the column inch. In my local newspaper on Sunday, I saw this display ad obituary:
If you can’t read the text, it says:
Chester Lee “Chet” Barnes, 1916 -2011
We mourn his passing and celebrate his life. He touched all of our lives in so many ways, as father & friend. His integrity, unwavering concern for others and his lifelong commitment to living right was an example for all. With love, memory of his deeds & the strength of his example live on.
I would like to especially thank my loving wife, Sherry and my daughter Shelia and her husband Mark Lee, my sister Ernalee and her husband Robert Widgren; Home Care Assistance’s Courtney Gonzales, Hospice of New Mexico’s Candice, Eileen and Larry for making it possible for my Dad to spend his last months at home where he wanted to be.
Thanks also to all his friends for all their words of support, condolences and to those who were able to attend his memorial service making it a “Celebration of his Life”.
Til we see each other again; love you Dad.
Richard L. Barnes
What a lovely way to preserve and share the memory of a remarkable man. Thank you Richard, for creating a keepsake obituary that conveyed elements of your father’s character and expressed your thanks to the people who supported the family.
I wish I could have covered the celebration of his life. May Chet Barnes’ memory be a blessing.
There’s a very interesting New York Times Magazine story by Rob Walker titled “Cyberspace When You’re Dead” that is now online. It’s got plenty of food for thought about pre-planning and communications to family and friends – Facebook and otherwise.
Here are the first few paragraphs:
Suppose that just after you finish reading this article, you keel over, dead. Perhaps you’re ready for such an eventuality, in that you have prepared a will or made some sort of arrangement for the fate of the worldly goods you leave behind: financial assets, personal effects, belongings likely to have sentimental value to others and artifacts of your life like photographs, journals, letters. Even if you haven’t made such arrangements, all of this will get sorted one way or another, maybe in line with what you would have wanted, and maybe not.
But many of us, in these worst of circumstances, would also leave behind things that exist outside of those familiar categories. Suppose you blogged or tweeted about this article, or dashed off a Facebook status update, or uploaded a few snapshots from your iPhone to Flickr, and then logged off this mortal coil. It’s now taken for granted that the things we do online are reflections of who we are or announcements of who we wish to be. So what happens to this version of you that you’ve built with bits? Who will have access to which parts of it, and for how long?
Not many people have given serious thought to these questions. Maybe that’s partly because what we do online still feels somehow novel and ephemeral, although it really shouldn’t anymore. Or maybe it’s because pondering mortality is simply a downer. (Only about a third of Americans even have a will.) By and large, the major companies that enable our Web-articulated selves have vague policies about the fate of our digital afterlives, or no policies at all. Estate law has only begun to consider the topic. Leading thinkers on technology and culture are understandably far more focused on exciting potential futures, not on the most grim of inevitabilities.
Nevertheless: people die. For most of us, the fate of tweets and status updates and the like may seem trivial (who cares — I’ll be dead!). But increasingly we’re not leaving a record of life by culling and stowing away physical journals or shoeboxes of letters and photographs for heirs or the future. Instead, we are, collectively, busy producing fresh masses of life-affirming digital stuff: five billion images and counting on Flickr; hundreds of thousands of YouTube videos uploaded every day; oceans of content from 20 million bloggers and 500 million Facebook members; two billion tweets a month. Sites and services warehouse our musical and visual creations, personal data, shared opinions and taste declarations in the form of reviews and lists and ratings, even virtual scrapbook pages. Avatars left behind in World of Warcraft or Second Life can have financial or intellectual-property holdings in those alternate realities. We pile up digital possessions and expressions, and we tend to leave them piled up, like virtual hoarders.
The article goes on to explore the story of Mac Tonnies, an active online guy who died at the age of 34, and what happened to his virtual friendships, his digital afterlife, and his actual possessions. It looks at businesses springing up to manage the digital and online affairs of those who die. And it examines the whole idea of who controls your online “stuff” after you’re gone and how or if you want to preserve a record of your life for all to see.
If nothing else, this story is a vital reminder to write down passwords for our loved ones to be able to access and deal with accounts after we’re gone. Read the whole story here.
A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die is now available! Here’s a small excerpt from the chapter titled “We Can Do That? New Trends in Death Care” about alkaline hydrolysis.
A New Eco-Friendly Disposal Method
While not in widespread use by funeral homes yet, there’s a relatively new process that liquefies the body into a coffee-colored sterile solution that can be safely disposed of in water or on land without concern about toxic chemicals.
This developing green alternative to burial and cremation accelerates natural decomposition. It has different names given by four different providers: BioSAFE Engineering calls it Water Resolution®, Eco-Green Cremation System calls it Natural Cremation, Matthews International, Inc. calls it Bio-cremation or Resomation®, and CycledLife calls it by its official name, alkaline hydrolysis.
The body is placed in a specialized tank that is filled with a strong alkali solution that is brought up to high temperature and pressure. The tissue dissolves into basic life-building blocks of amino acids, peptides, sugars, and soap (actually, the salts of fatty acids), leaving white, brittle skeletal remains that are easily powdered to ash. These sterile “bone shadows” can be returned as ashes if the family desires.
The process neutralizes embalming fluid, drugs, and the body’s DNA/RNA and it produces much less CO2 than a cremation. Titanium medical implants can be recovered intact and perfectly usable in Third World countries by organizations such as Doctors Without Borders. While not yet widely used as of 2010, the Mayo Clinic has successfully used the Water Resolution® process since 2007 to dispose of bodies donated for scientific research.
A Good Goodbye is available online at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and www.AGoodGoodbye.com.
Filed under: Funeral News Bits, Trends in Death Care | Tags: funeral planning, funerals, memorial services
Yesterday’s Dear Abby column had several letters reacting to a July 14 letter, where a man didn’t want to attend his mother’s funeral and have to see her on display in a casket. Several writers weighed in on the benefits of a memorial service, where the person’s life is celebrated without the body present.
A woman who works in a funeral home wrote in to suggest a couple of options for those who need to see a body to fully realize the person has died. Some funeral homes have more than one viewing room. They could display his mother in one and have the receiving line in another. That way, he wouldn’t have to see his mother in a casket. The service could include a closed casket — or none at all. Another choice would be cremation with a memorial service afterward. Both arrangements would allow the husband the chance for a final goodbye without seeing Mom in the casket.
Lisa Carlson, executive director of the Funeral Ethics Organization, wrote, “A memorial service can be a very different experience than a funeral with the casket present. One of the classiest ones I ever attended was at an art museum, with a jazz trio and a display of the deceased’s artwork all around. After listening to some wonderfully funny stories about the nifty lady we were there to honor, there was wine and finger food and cordial sharing of fond memories.”
She added, “My advice to any family is to start talking about funerals now, before the big event, sharing what you like and what you don’t about funerals. There is never only one way to do it.”
I am totally in agreement about that! You can read all of the responses to this important issue through this link.
Filed under: From Death to Funeral, Trends in Death Care | Tags: funeral planning, insurance
Scott Beeman, head of Aetna Life Insurance, which recently introduced expedited payments and funeral planning to their services, knows the value of speedy life insurance claims processing from personal experience. His father died when he was 11 years old.
“Any mail that was received for my father, we sat on a dining room table, and I don’t think my mom opened up my father’s mail until six or seven months after his death. And I would bet, somewhere in that pile of mail, was a claimant kit,” said Beeman.
He’s referring to the life insurance industry’s standard process of sending out a generic package or template of information to be filled out by the beneficiary in order to receive a death benefit payment. The problem is, the claimant kit could be left unopened for some time during bereavement, and then questions and mail time lag can add weeks to the claim process.
The average time it takes most life insurance companies to process an average claim ranges from 100-200 days from date of death to date of payment, and for some of the tardiest carriers out there, it could take more than 200 days. That’s six to seven months of waiting for a life insurance benefit payment. If you’re counting on that money to pay for a funeral, you are in a heap of trouble.
However, Aetna has a different approach to processing claims that makes their standard process 20% to 30% faster than other insurers. They don’t use a claimant kit, and they don’t require original death certificates because of the time it takes to get them from the appropriate authorities. “Those two things alone could save anywhere from a minimum of 10 days to a maximum of 100 days or more on a claim,” said Beeman.
Aetna also has an expedited service model called Beneficiary Management Services, where Aetna acts as the HR office on behalf of the employers who carry their life insurance. It means that Aetna files the claim using a team of beneficiary management analysts who are also bereavement counselors.
They help the bereaved beneficiary any way they can, making sure they realize all the benefits they can have, gathering the necessary documents for the claim, and submitting the claim. This service reduces Aetna’s standard claims processing time from about 100 days to approximately 50 days.
And now, Aetna is offering even faster expedited claims payments, within 24 to 48 hours. This service is combined with funeral planning services through Everest Funeral Planning, which include:
- 24X7 Advisor Assistance to discuss funeral planning issues with consumers, including choosing a funeral home, finding a cemetery, purchasing a casket and others.
- PriceFinder Research Reports to help consumers compare costs at local funeral homes. The PriceFinder database is the only nationwide database of funeral home prices.
- Online Planning Tools, including the “10 Key Decisions” and “My Wishes” planning guides. The personal information consumers enter into these tools is stored and maintained in a secure data warehouse.
In addition, this new offering also provides resources for families after the member has passed away. They include:
- Family Assistance and Plan Implementation – Advisors work with the family to understand their wishes and then communicate the personal funeral plan to the funeral home, providing 24-hour assistance throughout the funeral process.
- Negotiation Assistance – Advisors gather pricing information and present it to the family in an easy-to-read format; they negotiate funeral service pricing with local funeral homes; and help the family compare prices of caskets and other products or services.
A 2006 survey of Aetna customers indicated people said “I don’t like buying group life insurance because it only helps people after I die, it doesn’t help me while I’m living.” As a result, Aetna Life Essentials program started offering wellness services: discounts on fitness center memberships, fitness equipment, hearing and vision services, as well as personalized counseling for employees and beneficiaries who are suffering from disabilities or a serious medical condition. This is in addition to legal, financial and emotional services also offered through the value-added program.
Beeman said, “Being part of a health company at Aetna, we see the life insurance as just one continuum and the death benefit as one point of that continuum, to provide a benefit to our overall membership. Everest allows members who have to plan funerals for loved ones while they’re at work to be more efficient, helping them plan their own funerals or funerals for other loved ones who might not be living near them.”
“At a time of need, by expediting the claim payment, and having a funeral concierge there, we remove two barriers that prevent most people from being able to emotionally heal themselves and their families – their focus on the financials and the planning activities.”
As I’ve said in my presentations on funeral planning for those who don’t plan to die, just as talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about funerals won’t make you dead – and your family will benefit from the conversation. This new service will go a long way toward getting the conversation started.
