Health Insurers Own Tobacco Stocks Worth Nearly $4.5 Billion

[Mike]

From The Consumerist (http://consumerist.com/5281026/health-insurers-own-tobacco-stocks-worth-nearly-45-billion).

What a way to drum up business.

[Dodi Schultz]

In case you're interested in further details: I looked up the source, a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine for June 4th; it's from J. Wesley Boyd, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler, all MDs, of the Cambridge Health Alliance at Harvard.

They include a chart of some reported insurance-company holdings in tobacco companies (as of end of March, this year): Prudential, $1.38 billion; Prudential Financial, $264.3 million; Mass Mutual, $585.3 million; Northwestern Mutual, $235.8 million, Standard Life, $948.2 million; Sun Life (Canada), $1 billion; New York Life, $13 million.

--DS

[Judy G. Russell]

From The Consumerist (http://consumerist.com/5281026/health-insurers-own-tobacco-stocks-worth-nearly-45-billion). What a way to drum up business.Amazing, isn't it??

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Amazing, isn't it??
I suppose, in some way, this is fitting. If they are going to have to pay out billions in claims for smoking-induced illnesses, why not make some of that back by investing in tobacco?

If the tobacco market crashes because people quit smoking, they will have lost investment income but also will have avoided a lot of claims.

[Judy G. Russell]

If the tobacco market crashes because people quit smoking, they will have lost investment income but also will have avoided a lot of claims.Not exactly my idea of a win-win situation though...

[Mike]

If they are going to have to pay out billions in claims for smoking-induced illnesses...
As the premiums are raised by a factor of 1.5. Not to mention all the administrative fees the companies earn by processing the claims. And many of the claims are paid out of large self-insured companies' checkbooks, not the insurers'.