Final Expense Life Insurance Commercial Capitalizes on the Human Tendency to Avoid the Uncomfortable so Blatantly it is Amusing

I always find it interesting to be deemed a loser by the powers that be in tv land. I don’t know if it is the programming or the time of day both or neither, but based on the commercials I get a certain message. The TV land people think the viewers of that programming at that time are in debt with credit cards and the IRS, under-educated or partially educated with somewhat finished degrees, confused about Medicare and heading for a medical insurance disaster and in need of life insurance that they (the audience) thinks is unaffordable. Never fear, there is something called final expense insurance that is not the income replacement that people usually want when they buy life insurance. No this insurance only covers a person’s “final expenses.” Everyone is going to die, and it seems insurance companies have decided to try to obtain recession proof supply of customers–people who could not qualify for, and/or afford large policies and who are also going to die one day.

The first thing I think is ironic is the offer of help with medical bills. I would not want to get a policy to help me pay for medical treatment that evidently was not going to work for me since I was going to end up dead. This irony might have been obvious to the advertising people because in the commercial they skip over the medical bills that will crush you and focus on the inevitable–the funeral. Not every funeral is $8-9000. I was once a bystander of a situation that called for a husband to make arrangements for his recently deceased wife. Since Social Security will only pay something like $250, the funeral home had a package for that. I want to let my readers know that thousands of dollars for a funeral is not inevitable. The makers of the commercial know that too much talk of the inevitable is not the way to go. We are reassured that everything is fine, the mother featured was bringing this subject to the forefront to keep her son from having to think about such unpleasantness. The son can further put the ugly thoughts out of mind when he remembers that the policy has a “vitality” feature that provides tips and info to his mom around “even longer,” tips that maintain mom’s health so she can keep providing childcare for his baby. This commercial for people who cannot deal with life, and death, in any way shape or form just about hits the viewers over the head with the message, “we have something for you losers so you need not adjust yourselves an inch to deal with unpleasantness because through no effort of your own everything is fine and will be fine forever and ever, world without end, amen. And if you are a senior, you’d better take steps to pay for your inconvenient dying, or the grown kids will bad mouth your dead ass on national television.

i don’t even want to think about that

An adult son referring to the eventual death of his mother

well you don’t have to

A senior reassuring her adult son that real life will not hit him in the face, as long as she purchases the final expense insurance policy