Health Insurers
Health insurers want you to keep smoking, Harvard doctors say
Health and life insurance companies in the U.S. and abroad have nearly $4.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks, according to Harvard doctors.
“It’s the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back,” says David Himmelstein, an internist at the Harvard Medical School and co-author of a letter published in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The largest tobacco investor on the list, the 160-year old Prudential company with branches in the U.S. and the U.K., has more than $1.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks. The runner-up was Toronto-based Sun Life Financial, which apparently holds over $1 billion in Philip Morris (Altria) and other tobacco stocks. In total, seven companies that sell life, health, disability, or long-term care insurance, have major holdings in tobacco stock.
Why is it a big deal? “If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don’t want to see it go down,” says Himmelstein, “You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in.”
The letter is the third report that the doctors—who all support a national health care program—have published in the last 14 years. We decided to check in with some of the insurance companies mentioned in the letter to learn more about their policies with respect to tobacco stock. Prudential was unable to respond by press time. Sun Life, however, flatly denied the charges.
“Sun Life does not carry significant holdings in tobacco stocks,” says representative Steve Kee, “We do not disclose specific holdings and, for good measure, we conducted a review further to your inquiry and our exposure to ‘tobacco’ stocks is less than 0.005 percent [about $5 million] of the investment portfolio. Importantly, tobacco-related businesses can be part of a broader conglomerate involving other aspects such as food production.”
Himmelstein rechecked his numbers in the Osiris database, and said, “I fear that if Sun Life has a dispute, it is with Osiris not with us.”
In any event, the doctors’ persistence over the years seems to be working to some extent. They targeted MetLife and Cigna in their 1995 and 2000 letters to medical journals, but neither is listed in the latest reckoning, indicating that the insurers no longer hold enough to stock to be noted on filings for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, a representative for Cigna says they currently have no direct holdings in tobacco stock unless it is part of an index fund.
But with $4.5 billion still invested in Big Tobacco, many insurers are reaping profits from a cancer-causing industry. As Himmelstein puts it, "Is this who we want running our health care system?"
Source Scientific America
Link to Source
Health insurers make big bucks from Big Macs
Like most businesses, health and life insurance companies are out to make a buck, and one way they augment their income is by investing in other industries.
But a new study has found that $1.88 billion from this industry is backing the top five publicly traded fast food chains. Excessive consumption of this sort of food has been repeatedly linked to a host of health problems, including obesity and diabetes.
"Life and health insurance firms profess to support health and wellness, but their choice of financial investments has raised doubts," wrote Arun Mohan and his coauthors, all at the Department of Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, in an article published online April 15 in the American Journal of Public Health.
The largest burger backer was Northwestern Mutual, which had invested $422.2 million in publicly traded fast food corporations, including $318.1 million in McDonald's, according to Mohan's research.
It's already common knowledge that the insurance industry has made even bigger investments in tobacco (handing over almost $4.5 billion, according to a 2009 study), but evidence is mounting that obesity and other dietary diseases are becoming as much of a burden on health—both individual and national—than smoking. People who live near fast food restaurants are more likely to have a stroke than residents living farther away, according to another 2009 study. And high-fat foods have been shown to be rather addictive, at least in animal models.
The researchers conceded that "fast food can be consumed responsibly," but Mohan and his colleagues asserted that "the marketing and sale of products by fast food companies is done in a manner that undermines the public's health."
Although most companies—and many individuals—hand their investment portfolios over to financial firms (or separate company departments) to manage, the authors argued that, "insurers ought to be held to a higher standard of corporate responsibility."
"Our data illustrate the extent to which the insurance industry seeks to turn a profit above all else," Wesley Body, senior author of the study, said in a prepared statement. "Safeguarding people's health and well-being take a back seat to making money."
Source Scientific America
Link to Source
Health and life insurance companies in the U.S. and abroad have nearly $4.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks, according to Harvard doctors.
“It’s the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back,” says David Himmelstein, an internist at the Harvard Medical School and co-author of a letter published in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The largest tobacco investor on the list, the 160-year old Prudential company with branches in the U.S. and the U.K., has more than $1.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks. The runner-up was Toronto-based Sun Life Financial, which apparently holds over $1 billion in Philip Morris (Altria) and other tobacco stocks. In total, seven companies that sell life, health, disability, or long-term care insurance, have major holdings in tobacco stock.
Why is it a big deal? “If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don’t want to see it go down,” says Himmelstein, “You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in.”
The letter is the third report that the doctors—who all support a national health care program—have published in the last 14 years. We decided to check in with some of the insurance companies mentioned in the letter to learn more about their policies with respect to tobacco stock. Prudential was unable to respond by press time. Sun Life, however, flatly denied the charges.
“Sun Life does not carry significant holdings in tobacco stocks,” says representative Steve Kee, “We do not disclose specific holdings and, for good measure, we conducted a review further to your inquiry and our exposure to ‘tobacco’ stocks is less than 0.005 percent [about $5 million] of the investment portfolio. Importantly, tobacco-related businesses can be part of a broader conglomerate involving other aspects such as food production.”
Himmelstein rechecked his numbers in the Osiris database, and said, “I fear that if Sun Life has a dispute, it is with Osiris not with us.”
In any event, the doctors’ persistence over the years seems to be working to some extent. They targeted MetLife and Cigna in their 1995 and 2000 letters to medical journals, but neither is listed in the latest reckoning, indicating that the insurers no longer hold enough to stock to be noted on filings for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, a representative for Cigna says they currently have no direct holdings in tobacco stock unless it is part of an index fund.
But with $4.5 billion still invested in Big Tobacco, many insurers are reaping profits from a cancer-causing industry. As Himmelstein puts it, "Is this who we want running our health care system?"
Source Scientific America
Link to Source
Health insurers make big bucks from Big Macs
Like most businesses, health and life insurance companies are out to make a buck, and one way they augment their income is by investing in other industries.
But a new study has found that $1.88 billion from this industry is backing the top five publicly traded fast food chains. Excessive consumption of this sort of food has been repeatedly linked to a host of health problems, including obesity and diabetes.
"Life and health insurance firms profess to support health and wellness, but their choice of financial investments has raised doubts," wrote Arun Mohan and his coauthors, all at the Department of Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, in an article published online April 15 in the American Journal of Public Health.
The largest burger backer was Northwestern Mutual, which had invested $422.2 million in publicly traded fast food corporations, including $318.1 million in McDonald's, according to Mohan's research.
It's already common knowledge that the insurance industry has made even bigger investments in tobacco (handing over almost $4.5 billion, according to a 2009 study), but evidence is mounting that obesity and other dietary diseases are becoming as much of a burden on health—both individual and national—than smoking. People who live near fast food restaurants are more likely to have a stroke than residents living farther away, according to another 2009 study. And high-fat foods have been shown to be rather addictive, at least in animal models.
The researchers conceded that "fast food can be consumed responsibly," but Mohan and his colleagues asserted that "the marketing and sale of products by fast food companies is done in a manner that undermines the public's health."
Although most companies—and many individuals—hand their investment portfolios over to financial firms (or separate company departments) to manage, the authors argued that, "insurers ought to be held to a higher standard of corporate responsibility."
"Our data illustrate the extent to which the insurance industry seeks to turn a profit above all else," Wesley Body, senior author of the study, said in a prepared statement. "Safeguarding people's health and well-being take a back seat to making money."
Source Scientific America
Link to Source