Who was Alex Trabek

[Mighty Favog]

RIP

 

https://www.tmz.com/2020/11/08/alex-trebek-jeopardy-host-dead-dies-stage-4-pancreatic-cancer/

 

[Travis In Austin]

Very sad

[Bosco-d-gama]

Best I’ve heard .......   Alex was a welcome guest in everyone’s home.

[Schu]

God Speed AT... you'll be missed.

 

the best I've ever heard was Paul Harvey

[Gilbert]

The Answer Is....    "We will all be meeting in the sweet by and by"

[OO1]

RIP   yep , pancriatic cancer ------the worst ,  there is a cure in Germany , but it has to be caught early - 

[Travis In Austin]

1 hour ago, RandyH000 said:

RIP   yep , pancriatic cancer ------the worst ,  there is a cure in Germany , but it has to be caught early - 

A cure? 

The Whipple.procedure or is their something else out now?

 

The Whipple procedure isn't a cure, only about 4% who have the procedure make it to 5 years, but that much better than the alternative. 

[JJkizak]

I never heard anyone pronounce and enunciate the English language better than he.

JJK

[thebes]

A first class scumbag. A shill for one of the most crooked insurance companies in America. Colonial Penn.

A lot of people had a much worse ending than him because they Colonial Penn sucked up too much of the dwindling savings. Yet he's the guy who peddled those policies.

[OO1]

3 hours ago, dwilawyer said:

A cure? 

The Whipple.procedure or is their something else out now

, You're 100%  right ,  cure is a big word ,, we lost a family member to Pancreatic cancer   , the Whipple procedure  , it is a reprieve , he survived 2 years -----

[OO1]

A great Canadian- American Dual citizen  since 1997 -

 

 

[DizRotus]

14 hours ago, thebes said:

A first class scumbag. A shill for one of the most crooked insurance companies in America. Colonial Penn.

A lot of people had a much worse ending than him because they Colonial Penn sucked up too much of the dwindling savings. Yet he's the guy who peddled those policies.

 

Marty,

 

I must respectfully disagree.  I too was disappointed when I first saw Trebek doing ads for Colonial Penn, but I tempered my disappointment and judgment of him with the knowledge that I did not know all the facts.  Perhaps he knew someone who benefited from such a policy; he certainly didn’t need the money.

 

Insurance policies like those referred to in the Trebek ads are legal and help those unable to get “burial insurance” anywhere else.  It would be a great world if everyone had the opportunity to make a decent living and save for retirement, but that is not the reality of the world we live in.

 

Just because whole life insurance policies, rent to own, pay day lenders, and the like are legal, does not make it moral when those without information and/or resources are victimized by “legal” transactions.

 

Some people might suggest that charging to paint a house is a ripoff, as anyone can swing a paint brush.  I would disagree and take umbrage at any name calling regarding house painters.  No one is forced to buy insurance, forced to use a pay day lender or forced to pay to have a house painted.  

 

This is already TLDNR, but I will still relate an experience I had as a young prosecuting attorney.  Rent to own provides an opportunity for those with poor, or nonexistent, credit to get furniture, appliances, etc.  Is it more expensive than what is available to those with good credit? You bet it is.  Can it be abused? Unquestionably.  

 

The Battle Creek city police brought a warrant request at the urging of a local rent to own business.  An elderly man had “rented” a small TV.  At the end of the first contract, after faithfully making the “rental” payments, he was unable to make the final payment (essentially the whole cost of the TV) that would allow him to “purchase” the TV.  The “rental” agreement rolled over to a second year.  At the end of the second year, the same scenario occurred.  During the third contract, the man was unable to make the “rental” payments.  The business wanted to be paid on the final contract and it wanted the man charged with a crime.  The man had “paid” for the TV several times over.  I declined the warrant request and wrote on it, “DENIED.  A crime was committed, but not by Mr. Jones.”

 

While I abhor the “legal” abuses against poor people, I do not take the liberty of  ad hominem attacks against those in such businesses.  Providing credit, or life insurance, to those with poor credit or in poor health, is expensive.  I wouldn’t want to be in those businesses, but I don’t judge those who do.

 

 

[babadono]

6 hours ago, DizRotus said:

No one is forced to buy insurance,

Huh? My mortgagor is pretty insistent that i have house insurance. The state of Ca. is likewise about car insurance. Jury is still out on health insurance but not Medicare. OTOH I could be homeless, not drive and not work.

[dtel]

6 hours ago, DizRotus said:

Insurance policies like those referred to in the Trebek ads are legal and help those unable to get “burial insurance” anywhere else.

A GAP, policy, guaranteed policy, but it does not go into effect for 2 years of signing up. Within the 2 years you get your premiums back, after 2 years it pays even with suicide. The big catch is it's priced pretty hight per thousand which is usually not a high amount of payout, so like said kind of a burial policy, mostly for people with heath problems that would not qualify for almost any other insurance.

 

RIP AT, but I never watched your show.

[thebes]

 

 

 

7 hours ago, DizRotus said:

he certainly didn’t need the money.

 

 

Exactly. yet he did it anyways. 

 

A long time ago, when I worked on Capitol Hill, I was instrumental in getting Pennsylvania State Insurance regulators to curb some of the most flagrant abuses of that company.  It's been sleazy from day one and it hasn't changed since. If Trabek didn't know how scummy they were, then he was too dumb to play on Jeopardy yet alone host it.  Sorry his action are immoral given the way that company is, and will always be.  The fact of the matter is that he was using the trust he'd built up with the public to peddle a over-priced piss poor policies. Don't tell me he'd didn't know what he was doing. 

 

Here's just one of Penn's little schemes:

 

"One day in 1973, 65-year-old Elmer Norman went to his doctor for some hearing tests and a prescription for antibiotics to treat an ear infection. But when Norman submitted the bills to Colonial Penn Franklin, his health insurer, the company denied his $48 claim, arguing, among other things, that the prescription drug he'd received wasn't actually a prescription drug and therefore wasn't covered. Incensed, Norman contacted William Shernoff, the famous California trial attorney who'd won a landmark lawsuit against an insurance company a few years earlier.

Blind in one eye and mostly deaf -- he wore a homemade hearing aid made from big stereo headphones and a microphone connected to a box on his belt -- Norman eventually persuaded Shernoff to take his $48 case. During the litigation, Shernoff discovered that Colonial Penn had duped about 100,000 seniors into believing they were getting a "new and improved plan" when, in fact, it actually cut coverage to save more than $4 million annually. Colonial Penn's treatment of the seniors so outraged the jury that it awarded Norman a jaw-dropping $4.5 million, the company's annual savings, in punitive damages. (The case was settled for somewhat less.)"

 

People who support a company that makes it's money with spurious products from the poor and elderly are scumbags . Pure and simple.

People who shill for them are the same.

 

 

[oldtimer]

I don't disagree with you Thebes.  And he was just a presenter of the show, who had the answers (questions) in his hand which makes anyone look smart, undeservedly so.  But here's the rub.  If in a thread about someone's death, and you have something negative to say, don't.  You are not the first I have admonished on this.  Am I to be alone in this wish of courtesy for the deceased?  Unless we are speaking of a truly heinous despot, and hopefully they will all die soon and their corpse dragged through the streets by a pack of wild dogs, I tend to shy on the quiet side.  Every one of the despots though, and then piss on them and leave them to rot without a grave.  But I am not a vindictive soul...