Bio-Insurance August 20, 2009March 15, 2017 WARREN BUFFETT’S VIEW ON MONEY In case you missed it in yesterday’s New York Times . . . we’re doing what we need to do, Warren Buffett says, referring to all this gargantuan deficit-spending and money-printing. But we’d better get ready to do something different as soon as we are able. TED OLSON’S VIEW ON MARRIAGE And also in yesterday’s Times . . . famed conservative Ted Olson, who persuaded the Supreme Court to install George W. Bush as President, now hopes to persuade the Court to allow marriage equality. A NEW KIND OF INSURANCE You sit for three or four hours having your own stem cells painlessly extracted . . . then watch as they’re freeze-dried, like coffee, and stored, like furs for the summer . . . and then, years later, in case you should need to grow a new limb or something, voilá! Watch the video here. It’s “bio-insurance.” Thoughts? (Full disclosure: a friend who’s advising the company sent me the link; being boyish if not rakish in my unstudied enthusiasm for such things, I bought a few shares just for the thrill.) (Further disclosure: apparently it’s less about growing new limbs than repairing bum knees – at least for now.) (Final disclosure: the procedure is priced at $7,500 up front plus $750 a year to stay frozen.) One big question I had after watching the video – what advantage is there to going through this procedure before you NEED to do? How would that 52-year-old in the video have been helped if he had done this at age 30 and paid for 22 years of storage – versus just harvesting his stem cells this year, once he knew he needed them, waiting a few weeks for them to replicate? But assuming it does make sense to bank them early, as argued in the video . . . How about a steep family discount? Four for the price of two? And how about an “endowment” option – say, a one-time $5,000 add-on for lifetime storage? Which might be accompanied by some kind of insurance policy from Berkshire Hathaway guaranteeing a $50,000 pay-out if your deposit should ever be lost by virtue of a meltdown. And of course the most obvious suggestion of all (drum roll please): while we’re freezing things and providing genetic insurance – shouldn’t we toss in free spermcryogenics? Give our customers something fun to do during those 3-4 hours? Which reminds me: WORKING YOUR WAY THROUGH COLLEGE Oh, my.