For the most part, it wasn’t insurance at all. Think about it: what insurance company is going to sell Wal-Mart 350,000 policies in a way that would let Wal-Mart profit from deaths? The plans were set up so that there would be no gain or loss from the risk element of the policies.

The gain came from tax rules that allowed companies in effect to deduct interest payments and then get that interest back tax-free. That game worked best as the cash value of each policy increased, that is, only while the employees lived. Each death was one less tree in the tax-avoidance orchard. Mr. Moore doubtless found that particular truth inconvenient.

As for the label “dead peasants insurance,” no one ever called it that until the media lifted the term out of context.