Insurance Companies Profit Twice From Smokers

The Center For Media & Democracy has:

Insurance Companies Profit Twice From Smokers

• health
• international
• tobacco

Source: The Province (Canada), June 5, 2009

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases and cancer, and is known to elevate the risk for heart attack and stroke. The study found that the American insurance company Prudential Financial, Inc. has $264.3 million invested in U.S. cigarette makers, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. The Canadian company Sun Life Financial, Inc., which sells life, health and disability insurance, owns over $1 billion worth of stock in tobacco interests, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability coverage, has $1.38 billion invested in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, says that while it may seem self-defeating for companies to sell insurance while also owning tobacco stocks, insurers have found ways to profit from both. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit -- and smokers lose -- twice over." Study co-author David Himmelstien explains, "It's the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way, you get your dog back." Boyd adds that the main objective for insurance companies is not to safeguard customers' well-being, but to generate profits. The authors also point to this study as a reason why health insurance coverage should not be left in the hands of private insurers.

The authors got it Wrong as to leaving Health Insurance in Private hands. The Correct answer is to have SEC and FTC move in and break up Insurance Carriers into smaller entities, thereby: Forcing Those Insurance Carriers to Compete for Customers by Providing a Better Product/Service than their competitors.

Ahhh, nd: Regulating them Out of the practice of Penalizing Smokers/Denying them Coverage while holding tobacco investments.

But even the Above Financial Conflict of Interest is Not the full extent of the Damage to America's Economy/Health.

Any exposure to Nicotine, Coming & Going, qualifies you for Further, Industrial Money Grubbing, Psychiatric, Chemical Brain Damage, too.

DSM-IV-TR Billing Code: 305.10: Nicotine Dependence

DSM-IV-TR Billing Code: 292.0: Nicotine Withdrawal


We Tried Federally controlling Health through Outlawing Alcohol once already. It took a Constitutional Amendment (XVIII 1/16/1919) to accomplish That Federal Tyranny. And the Crime Explosion that Federal regulation of Health Sin engendered rocked America from Coast to Coast. It took Another Constitutional Amendment (XXI 12/5/1933) to undo the First Tyrannical Constitutional Amendment.

The war on Smokers is just a different spin of the same bottle.