In any given year, this family would be obligated to spend about 13% of their take home pay on medical costs before they could look to their insurance for help plus the sum they are paying in premium costs for the benefit of the catastrophic policy.

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The sum, which includes a 12% buyer's premium, was around twice what had been predicted by auction house Bonhams.

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"It's not a crime to think the stock could trade at parity to the sum of its parts--or even at a premium to that, " he maintains.

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They assured us that the premium would stay the same throughout our life and the sum assured would stay the same.

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