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More than a decade after Harvard researchers first revealed that life and health insurance companies were major investors in tobacco stocks - prompting calls upon them to divest - the insurance industry has yet to kick the habit, they say.
A new article on insurance company holdings, published in New England Journal of
Medicine, shows that U.S., Canadian and U.K.-based insurance firms hold at least $4.4 billion of investments in companies whose subsidiaries manufacture cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco
and related products.
Tobacco products currently contribute to the deaths of 5.4 million people worldwide
annually, according to the World Health Organization. Tobacco use is a major risk factor for stroke, heart attack, lung disease and
cancer.
“Despite calls upon the insurance industry to get out of the tobacco business by physicians and others, insurers continue to put their profits above people’s
health,” said Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, the lead author of the article. “It’s clear their top priority is making money, not safeguarding people’s well-being.”
“Although investing in tobacco while selling life or health insurance may seem
self-defeating,” the authors write, “insurance firms have figured out ways to profit from both. Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit - and smokers lose - twice
over.”
The same researchers, all of whom are affiliated with Physicians for a National Health Program, first published data about the “tobacco-insurance company connection” in 1995 in the medical journal Lancet. They say that because private, for-profit insurers have repeatedly put their own financial gain over the public’s health, readers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom should be wary about insurance firms’ participation in care.
“Insurance industry investments in tobacco,” J. Wesley Boyd, M.D., Ph.D.; David U. Himmelstein, M.D; Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. New England Journal of Medicine, June 4, 2009
Physicians for a National Health Program
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