Is Nantucket a bellwether for the funeral industry?

Wednesday, 06 August 2014 00:00

Update 8/6/14 --- Despite lobbying efforts by funeral home and cemetery industry groups, a bill passed by the Massachusetts legislature will allow Nantucket residents to form a non-profit funeral service on the island. The bill exempts Nantucket from certain laws that would impede their plans, such as requiring a chapel in all funeral establishments. Read about the bill here. 

The New York Times ran a fascinating story July 13 about the closure of Nantucket Island's only funeral home. This is causing residents logistical problems, as bodies have to be shipped off the island by ferry to a mainland funeral home.

But on Feb. 14, the day of Ms. Davis’s funeral, New England was digging out from a huge snowstorm and bracing for the next. Foul weather forced the cancellation of the ferry that was to bring Ms. Davis home. Her body spent almost a month on the mainland at the funeral home, but suspended in what her daughter called a heartbreaking limbo.

What's interesting to us, though, is how the story highlights two foundational problems in the American funeral industry:

1. The vast oversupply of funeral home relative to the population
2. Anti-competitive hearse-circling from the organized funeral industry

Most people don't realize that the US has almost twice as many funeral homes as it would need to adequately serve the population while providing a good living for the funeral home and staff. In some states there are four to five times as many as needed.

Unlike in other sectors, like restaurants, more rooftops doesn't lead to price competition. It's just the opposite. A restaurant can find ways to keep you coming back for meal after meal. But a funeral home can only sell you one funeral, no matter how good their marketing. There's a fixed, absolute number of deaths per capita. The more funeral homes there are, the fewer calls there are to go around. So prices go up. Or, as Nantucket's experience shows, some are finally going out of business.

The Times notes Nantucket's loss of its only funeral home "inspired some to redouble their efforts to establish a nonprofit funeral service here." Of course, there's a but:

But they are being opposed by powerful organizations representing Massachusetts’ cemeteries and funeral directors. Those groups say Nantucket’s efforts could open the door for other towns to set up their own funeral homes, which, they say, would undermine state regulations and even threaten public health. Local officials say those arguments are specious and that the organizations are simply worried about losing business.

"Public health." "State regulations." These are the funeral trade groups' favorite excuses for opposing any and all potential competition. The local officials are right; these arguments are specious. Funeral homes are not part of the public health infrastructure despite the industry's century-long campaign to elevate itself to the prestige-level of physicians. Contrary to popular belief, dead people are not a public health menace (those of us still top-side are the ones who spread disease, not the inert dead). It should embarrass the industry that its trade associations are still peddling this unscientific nonsense. And it's not plausible that they simply don't know any better. They do, but they are willing to pretend otherwise because they know that connecting "dead bodies" with "health" provokes an emotional fear response from the public. So much the better for a retail sector that wants to own everything we do with our dead.

Nantucket citizens deserve praise for ingenuity and compassion. Launching a nonprofit funeral service to take care of their own is in the best traditions of rural self-sufficiency and neighborly care. Undertakers' trade groups should be ashamed of standing in the way. Especially when it's their creaking, antique business model that got Nantucket where it finds itself today.

Interested in how the funeral industry uses the lawmaking process to make your funeral more costly? Read "Circling the Hearses," the first chapter from Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 August 2014 15:04 )  

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When the state protects the industry from the consumer

Wednesday, 16 October 2013 13:23

—Gere Fulton, president, FCA of South Carolina

Last spring The State newspaper published an op-ed column that I wrote about the persecution of a local tradesman who was being threatened by two state government entities for building and selling wooden caskets. (Circling the Hearses, May 2, 2013) Mike White, a farrier by trade, had been issued Cease and Desist orders by both the Board of Funeral Service (BFS) and the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), and was being threatened with a fine of up to $10,000 by the latter if he didn't stop selling his $300 simple wooden caskets to families who wanted to bury their dead on farmland in Swansea. In a step that some might regard as extortion, the DCA informed him that he could avoid going to trial by immediate payment of $750. In essence it was "Pay now and this will go away...or you could hire a lawyer and take your chances at trial."

After that column was published, and letters were sent to the administrator at DCA, they decided to drop the complaint and acknowledged, in a tersely-written letter, that White hadn't broken any laws. They stopped short of apologizing for any "inconvenience" or anxiety they might have caused by their baseless accusation.

The complaint about Mr. White's caskets had been filed by an area funeral director who was doubtlessly motivated by a fear that cheap caskets were a threat to one of the biggest profit-makers in his business. Unfortunately, neither he nor the DCA seemed to understand that what Mr. White had been doing wasn't a violation of the regulations on the "pre-need" sale of funerals, something that DCA would grudgingly admit several months later. Mr. White never obtained a license for a "retail casket sales outlet," the control of which lies in the hands of the funeral director-controlled BFS, because they would have required him to "have on display at all times six adult caskets" and maintain "clean and accessible public restrooms." The BFS has been fighting to keep the residents of the Midlands from purchasing inexpensive caskets since the first retail casket store was proposed in Columbia in 2000. At that time they wanted to impose a $100,000 bond on the retailer.

Mike White no longer sells $300 caskets to the public. Instead, he sells his caskets to Memorial Design, a monument store in Lexington, to which his friend Michael Bishop, the developer of South Carolina's second green cemetery (Dust to Dust), refers families in search of a simple, yet dignified, burial to purchase them. And now the BFS has decided to turn their trocars on Michael Bishop. Although they have no evidence that he has been selling caskets—he hasn't and they allege none in their Cease and Desist order—they demand that he stop doing so.

The BFS is composed of 11 members. Nine of the eleven are licensed funeral directors, the other two are "general public" members appointed by the Governor. Isn't it time that our state employees and their funeral director bosses begin serving the people of South Carolina and not serving them with C & D orders?

Earlier this year Governor Haley created a Regulatory Review Task Force and directed all of the state agencies to review their regulations and identify those that might be eliminated to create a more business-friendly environment in the state. When the Task Force held a public hearing in Columbia, on July 12, the Funeral Consumers Alliance was there to urge them to remove the sale of caskets from the control of the BFS. The funeral industry has, until recently, had a monopoly on the sale of caskets and, because of that, purchasers are subjected to a "mark-up" that may be as high as 400-600 percent! The National Funeral Directors Association recently reported that the median cost of a casket was $2,395.

In South Carolina, as in most states, there are no regulations on the manufacture of caskets and caskets are not even required for burial. You may build your own casket, purchase one on the Internet, and they are even available at Walmart and Costco—but that won't last much longer if the BFS is successful. They have been busy working to persuade those nationwide retailers from delivering a casket to anyone with a South Carolina mailing address. One is compelled to wonder whether this state agency, funded by the taxpayers, is working for us or if its sole purpose is the economic security of the funeral industry.

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Dr. Fulton is the president of the Board of Directors of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of South Carolina (www.scfunerals.org). He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

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The Book the Funeral Industry Doesn't Want You to Read

Wednesday, 02 March 2011 22:35

"VERDICT---This book is a boon for those looking to simplify and personalize caring for the dead. The inclusion of a compilation of each state’s funeral laws, including statutory citations and guidance for those investigating home funerals and burials and body donation, make this an essential purchase for consumer-protection collections."— Library Journal

Final Rights is the definitive book on the modern funeral industry. Written by FCA executive director Josh Slocum and Funeral Ethics Organization leader Lisa Carlson, Final Rights combines journalistic investigation with practical consumer advice. The only book of its kind, Final Rights unveils the tricks of the funeral trade (and how to avoid them) while calling out government regulators who dance to the $15-billion death industry's tune when they're supposed to be protecting you, the funeral consumer.

In eight states the law says you have to hire a funeral home, even if you want to care for a deceased relative privately. Almost $1 billion has been stolen from trust funds and insurance policies families paid for to ensure their last wishes were carried out. Where were the regulators?Interested in a formaldehyde-free funeral? Better be careful, as the conventional burial industry is finding creative ways to make your "green" send-off as pricey as possible.The Federal Trade Commission gives you specific protections when you buy from a funeral home, but they disappear when you get to the graveyard. Find out why, and how to watch your wallet at the graveside.Final Rights has a chapter on the laws in each state, written in plain English. Find out how well (or how badly) you're protected from funeral fraud, and learn where your state needs to reform!

Every American who plans to die (that's you) needs to read this book. Final Rights belongs on the bookshelf of every hospice worker, nurse, social worker, and elder-law attorney. Curious? Read the first chapter, Circling the Hearses, free.

Visit our bookstore to order Final Rights. Every copy you buy directly from FCA will put dollars behind our mission to protect the public from exploitation and funeral fraud.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 12 February 2012 01:47 )  

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