One thing I don’t understand at all – in accounts of early and mid-20th century America you see life insurance policies treated how homeownership-by-mortgage is now: as an investment you gradually build equity in and can later partially or fully “cash out” as a nest egg.

And I kinda get it - an active policy is like a bond of unknown (but actuarially predictable) maturity and negative coupon rate (the premiums), I can see why that would be a negotiable instrument and tax/regulatory policy might’ve favored that vehicle over other types of savings

But when doomed-seeming AIDS patients were pre-selling their insurance payouts in the 80s it was something distinct, “viaticals”, so how did the prior system work?