-Caveat Lector-
William Hugh Tunstall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> Speaking of conspiracies, I've often wondered about the mortuary
> business.
>
http://www.philly.com/specials/99/burying/html/bury02.asp
The Burying Business:
Why funeral costs stay so high
Examining rituals and reforms of the industry that cares for our dead. First
of five parts.
By Dianna Marder
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
In The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford told of grieving families
bullied into paying inflated prices for unnecessary embalmings and for
waterproof caskets padded with Sealy Posturepedic mattresses, lined with satin
pillows for an eternal slumber.
That was fully 36 years ago, and despite government efforts to reform the
funeral business many of the old problems remain and new ones have emerged.
So loud was the public cry for reform after publication of Mitford's scathing
indictment of the industry that the Federal Trade Commission launched its
first effort at regulation. And so resistant was the industry that the debate
over regulation lasted nearly two decades.
Today, 15 years after passage of the first federal Funeral Rule, planning a
funeral can be just as difficult, just as costly, just as confusing as ever.
Funeral directors now charge a fee of about $1,000 -- over and above other
specific costs -- just to take your business.
Federal regulations require funeral directors to give families an itemized
price list. But some don't. When they're caught, they're fined. But the
industry struck a deal with the government so the names of violators don't
become public.
The federal regulations were never meant to contain prices. The average cost
of a funeral rose 26 percent in the last five years -- more than 10 times the
rate of inflation. At $4,000 to $8,000 (the average funeral now costs $5,500),
the funeral is still among a family's most expensive purchases.
The reforms did not cover cemeteries. Many cemeteries now charge as much or
more to dig a grave as to buy the plot. The U.S. Senate Special Committee on
Aging has ordered an investigation of the death-care industry, specifically
looking at allegations of deceptive and high-pressure sales tactics by
industry providers.
Laurie Ekstrand, an official with the General Accounting Office, which is
conducting the congressional investigation, said her office was stunned by the
absence of consumer protection and the complexity of funeral planning.
"It was a real eye-opener," Ekstrand said. "We had no idea about all this."
Hank Leszczynski battled his adrenal cancer for three years, enduring
chemotherapy, radiation and experimental drugs. In all that time, he could not
bear to believe he would die. How could his two small sons be left with no
memory of his face, his touch, or the sound of his voice at storytime?
And in the final days of his life in 1995, when hope of a cure was gone and
the focus was on making him comfortable, Hank's mind was consumed with
weightier thoughts than the funeral.
In some hospice cases, families are able to plan funerals together. But that
was not the situation for Hank and his wife of seven years, Karen.
When Hank died on April 5, 1995, at age 42, he left Karen with two sons, ages
2 and 3, a small insurance policy, and no funeral instructions. Karen didn't
even know which funeral home to call.
There is no shortage of funeral homes; this region has 600. Most people use
one that buried other relatives or happens to be close by.
Karen called the funeral home nearest her house in Andalusia, Bucks County:
Fluehr Funeral Home. Richard J. Fluehr Sr., owner of the family firm, outlined
her options. (He declined to be interviewed for this article.)
"He was nice," Karen said. "Not at all pushy."
Still, she was overwhelmed by the number of decisions that had to be made --
and money was a concern.
She was shown a price list for things she didn't know whether she needed or
wanted: embalming, limousines, flowers, prayer cards, burial clothing and
something called an "outer burial container."
What Karen remembers most from those difficult days are the words of a hospice
social worker.
"She told me right away: 'Don't let the price of the coffin measure how much
you loved your husband.' "
"And that was good advice," Karen said, "because I didn't know what to
expect."
Generations before ours had more first-hand experience with death. Children
died in infancy more frequently, and more siblings were lost to disease.
People often died in their beds and were laid out in the parlor. There was a
procession through town to the cemetery. Bells tolled -- once for a man, twice
for a woman. A funeral wreath on the door told everyone a death had occurred.
The family wore mourning clothes, and when you saw someone dressed in black,
it was appropriate to stop, ask who had died, and offer condolences.
But as the viewing moved from the family parlor to the funeral parlor and
medicine extended life, the lessons of the past became lost. The price of a
funeral rose while the value of the rituals and ceremonies of death was
diminished. Death became something that wasn't talked about, and funeral
arrangements were made behind closed doors.
Although television talk shows paved the way for more frank conversations
about some formerly prohibited topics -- adultery, homosexuality, even
prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction -- most Americans still feel
uncomfortable talking about mortality and money, the very combination of
factors involved in funeral planning.
Today, the hospice movement is slowly bringing death home again, and
bereavement groups provide the support once offered by friends and neighbors
-- but even in these counseling sessions, the issue of cost is rarely
addressed.
And in that silence, the funeral and burial business remains mysterious.
The future of that business is being shaped now by shifting demographics and
new financial forces.
Men and women who moved to another state for the sake of a job don't
necessarily want to be buried there. And yet there may no longer be enough
relatives back home to provide a reason for shipping the body there. Aging
parents who moved to Florida now find the cost of shipping their remains is at
least $1,600, in addition to the $4,000 to $8,000 for the funeral back home
and $2,000 more for the burial there.
There has been more inter-religious marriage. Because the funeral is still a
religious rite for many people, a spouse whose partner is of another faith
finds it difficult to choose a funeral home and cemetery when the partner
dies.
Perhaps the biggest influence on the industry's future will come early in the
21st century, when the number of deaths each year is expected to rise.
Baby boomers are turning 50 at the rate of 10,000 a day. About 2.3 million
people in the United States die each year, but by the year 2040, that figure
will almost double -- to 4.1 million annually, according to the National
Funeral Directors Association.
This is the same '60s generation that dramatically changed the way we wed
(introducing the write-your-own vows) and give birth (bringing the father into
the delivery room, using midwives and reintroducing breast-feeding). They've
already brought a renewed emphasis on hospice care and death with dignity.
Now the death-care industry is bracing for those 76 million boomers to change
funerals as well.
Competition in the $25 billion death-care business is already the focus on
Wall Street.
Three international conglomerates have been buying up independent funeral
homes and cemeteries throughout the country for at least a decade. Service
Corporation International, the Loewen Group and Stewart Enterprises already
own about 15 percent of all the funeral homes and cemetery properties in the
United States and control 25 percent of the profits.
The first charge Karen Leszczynski encountered was Fluehr's professional
services fee, which was $725 then, four years ago. Today Fluehr's fee is
$1,295.
Essentially, it covers overhead; it is what the mortician charges for acting
as a general contractor.
The fee came into existence in 1984 with passage of the Funeral Rule -- the
first federal law to regulate the funeral business.
For decades, funeral directors had been hiding their overhead costs in one
package price that was given as the price of the casket. But the Funeral Rule
required itemized pricing -- a separate price tag on each piece of merchandise
and each service performed. Funeral directors found they could no longer
inflate casket prices high enough to include overhead.
Instead, the government approved the concept of a professional services fee.
The industry said the fee was justified because funeral directors are on call
24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They maintain fleets of vehicles and
buildings that have to be heated and air-conditioned. If they do their jobs
well, the funeral goes smoothly and the family has positive memories of an
important life ritual -- a benefit with no specific price tag.
But the professional services fee does not cover a funeral director's time at
a viewing, or at a Mass, or at a funeral service itself. Nor does it
compensate time spent at an interment, where the body is lowered into the
ground. All those costs are added to the bill separately.
And since 1984 the average professional services fee has escalated from $125
to $1,025, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
Some consumer activists call it a "walking in the door" fee -- similar to the
fees charged by lawyers or doctors for office visits or consultations.
Lisa Carlson, who heads the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America, a
lobbying and educational group, said the fee should be abolished.
"What other company gets paid for answering its phone?" Carlson asks.
It was time for Karen to select a casket. Fluehr, the funeral home owner,
handed her a looseleaf display book of caskets.
Funeral homes nationwide are replacing their casket display rooms with
looseleaf binders. It is a more efficient use of space -- and for some reason
has helped increase sales. Karen said she preferred the arrangement because
she dreaded walking into a room full of caskets.
Most families don't know what to select, Carlson said, and are easily drawn to
whatever the funeral director says is the most popular model.
Karen picked out a bronze-finish casket priced at $925, plus a name plate and
crucifix for $55.
"I wasn't going to go for the plain pine box, but I wasn't going to go for the
top-of-the-line, either. I went with what they said was their standard," she
said.
Ultimately, Karen said, she found the cemetery-related expenses the most
confusing.
She told Fluehr she wanted Hank buried on sacred ground, in a Catholic
cemetery. So he called the closest -- Resurrection -- and made arrangements.
That's when Karen learned that Archdiocesan cemeteries all sell only
double-depth graves. The first body goes in at eight feet and the second at
six feet.
A client today can buy one double-depth grave for two bodies at $800
(including a one-time fee of $100 for perpetual care), or a family plot for
six bodies that costs $1,800 (including $300 for perpetual care).
But you cannot buy one grave for one person for $400.
Robert Whomsley, who heads the Archdiocese cemetery office, calls the
double-depth graves "singles." But people like Karen, who really only want or
need one grave site, bristle at that terminology. A true single, Karen said,
would be a $400 grave site for one person.
The Archdiocese is not alone in selling only double-depth graves, which use
space more efficiently. Ivy Hill Cemetery operator David Drysdale said his
cemetery also sold only double-depth graves -- priced at $850.
Next, Karen said, she was persuaded to spend $525 on an outer burial container
-- an object she had never heard of.
The container is a grave liner, she learned. The least expensive is made of
granite, the most expensive made of bronze. It is placed in the ground before
the coffin, ostensibly to keep the surrounding earth from caving in.
No state or federal law requires the use of liners, but cemeteries are free to
make their own rules -- and the vast majority require liners. For cemeteries,
liners reduce grounds maintenance costs. For funeral homes, they represent one
more product to sell.
When Karen was making Hank's arrangements, a liner was still optional in
Archdiocesan cemeteries. It became a requirement in July. Whomsley said he
added the requirement for the sake of maintenance.
"We didn't think it would be a big change since 90 percent of families using
Archdiocesan cemeteries used grave liners anyway," he said.
Karen said that when she told the funeral director she was confused about the
liner, she was shown a grisly picture of a collapsed grave.
"I didn't know what to do," she said. "So I just gave in and bought the
cheapest liner."
Another surprise for Karen was the cost of digging the grave, called the
opening fee.
In this region, opening fees run from $450 to $1,200, according to the
Memorial Society of Greater Philadelphia. Ten years ago, the fee ranged from
$300 to $600.
In Archdiocesan cemeteries, the opening fee is $775 and, like all cemetery
charges, it is subject to change annually, Whomsley said. Cemeteries also
charge another opening fee when the second person is buried. Archdiocesan
cemeteries refer to this as a reopening fee and charge about $725.
Karen's expenses for funeral and burial totaled $5,610 -- which is within the
average range nationally.
Still, it was more than Karen, who had two toddlers to support, really wished
to spend.
Karen never had a chance to explain her financial situation at the cemetery
because the funeral director made the cemetery arrangements over the telephone
-- a common practice. But Whomsley said parish priests may request a price
break for a needy family.
A few weeks after the funeral, Hank's brothers held a beef and beer party to
help pay the bill.
Karen still felt numb. At home, she was bombarded with calls from monument
dealers.
Telephone soliciting by funeral homes and cemeteries is becoming a common
consumer complaint nationwide, said Carlson, of the Funeral and Memorial
Societies. In New Jersey, funeral homes are not permitted to do telemarketing,
but cemeteries are.
In Pennsylvania, no law bars telemarketing by funeral homes or cemeteries.
Monument dealers are not covered by telemarketing laws, and many make full use
of the opportunity to market their product by phone.
"One salesman in particular kept calling, and finally I said, 'Please don't
call me -- I just don't know what I'm going to do yet,' " Karen said. "And I
think he did call me once more."
Eventually, she decided to go to a monument dealer who had sent a mailing but
had not called.
She had to abide by the rules set by the Archdiocese: One double-depth grave
can have only a flat marker. For an upright marker, the family must purchase a
plot of at least two double-depth graves.
Karen picked out a flat concrete marker.
"Nothing elaborate, no metal trim," she said. "But I had to decide if I wanted
his name on one end and leave the other end blank for my name, or I could have
one name under the other."
But what if she should marry again and be buried elsewhere? Would there be a
blank space eternally on Hank's marker?
She chose Travis Memorials in Oxford Circle, which worked with her on the
arrangements of the letters so that there is room for another name later, but
for now it does not appear that something is missing from the marker.
And Karen individualized the wording on the marker as well. The original said:
"Forever in our Hearts." She had them take out "Forever" and, in recollection
of "Always," the Irving Berlin song she and Hank danced to at their 1988
wedding, she made it "Always in our hearts."
Adam, who was 3, and Alek, who was 2, did not attend their father's funeral in
1995.
Months later, Karen took the boys to the cemetery for the first time.
She prepared them by explaining that they would see a marker on the ground.
But when they arrived, a nearby grave site was being dug and the earth from
that grave was piled high on Hank's, obscuring his flat marker. The boys
cried. Karen didn't know what to say.
When she complained to cemetery officials, they said it was unavoidable -- and
they couldn't guarantee it would not happen again. Since then, Karen and her
children haven't had problems on their visits to the grave site.
Hank's marker is continuing evidence that he lived, Karen tells Alek and
Adam.
"Daddy's always here," she tells the boys. "No one can tell you that you
didn't have a Daddy because you did -- and you do."
She kneels by the grave and talks to Hank -- about how their sons have grown
and how much she misses him -- while the boys run and play in a stand of
evergreens on the hill.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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