Can you afford to die?

My first blog is about about death and the cost of dying. I work in life insurance and so often I get calls from men and women that have reached their retirement and have not thought about how to pay for their burial expense. Burial expenses cost about $10,000 to $20,000. Most of the people are surprised when they find they do not have enough savings to cover the costs. More are surprised when they find that the life insurance that was being provided to themby their employer terminates when they retire. Some retirees have an employer-sponsored retiree plan that will include a death benefit. However not all employer-sponsored retiree plans include a death benefit. Most do not. For those plans that do have the benefit the retirees are surprised that the plans only have a miniscule benefit such as $5,000 or less. Even more, those retiree plans that have more of a benefit will find that the benefit reduces as the person gets older and the premiums that they must pay out of the retirement check will increase. So here is the question. What should society do to bury the bodies of the dead that die destitute? This may not have been such as issue in the past. The generation that came before had saved more and planned for the unavoidable event of death. But now one of the largest generations (the Baby Boomers) are retiring. Many are in good health and will out live their savings leaving no funds to bury them. Others are in poor health and will spend their savings to cover the medical costs incurred due to their poor health. Generation X, the children of the Boomers, has been living on borrowed money and does not have savings to cover their own cost of burial let along their parents.  Even more, Social Security only provides a $250 death benefit. What are we going to do as a society to head off this inevitable problem of burying our deceased?