Regarding The Sit-Ins At CIGNA, Aetna, et al...

Regarding the sit-ins at CIGNA, Aetna, et al...
By John Jonik

This is in hope that the topic of for-profit insurers' huge investments in health-damaging industries is raised prominently, especially during any actions at For-Profit Headquarters.

Those investments create utterly unacceptable conflicts of interest that prompt or virtually require those insurers to do As Little As Possible to expose or warn about health harms caused by their investment properties.

An incentive is also created to ignore or mis-diagnose industrial causes of illnesses. This system virtually institutionalizes malpractice.

This system perpetuates what we have now---a preponderance of "health concerns" about anything BUT industrial-caused health harms. We hear little else except highly arbitrary "concerns" ("truthy" though they may be) for peoples' behavior (smoking, drinking, over-eating, sexual activity, etc.), or about natural causes...tobacco plants, viruses, germs, insects, bacteria, pollen, the sun, "faulty genes", etc., and that old standby, "unknown factors".

Often they say "environmental factors" are or may be to blame...but without mentioning that that means industrial pollutants of our vital natural environment. To just say the causes are or may be "environmental factors" would have some think that it's nature on the attack. Use of that term also hints that environmentalists are somehow associated with the Bad Side. Who's going to join with the environmentalists if they are associated with cancer etc? Generally speaking, no word or phrase is used by the commercial media accidentally.

But, when we find that top health insurers invest many Billions into health-damaging industries (even everyone's hated cigarette manufacturers!), things become clear.

Nature, and we the people, are to be blamed for our own illnesses that may well be caused by industrial toxins and carcinogens and other substances. We are required to "take personal responsibility" though it's impossible to take responsibility protecting ourselves or our children from things we aren't even told about by our mainstream media, corporatized medical professionals, or by our supposed public officials. The concept of Corporate Responsibility, or responsibility of complicit AWOL govt officials, is not to be contemplated in the mainstream.

So...for use on the Front Lines, here are two pieces from PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) re: health insurers' vast investments in just cigarette manufacturing.

Health, life insurers hold billions in tobacco stocks: NEJM article

Insurers Are Major Investors in Big Tobacco Popular Mutual Funds Also Have Billions Invested in Tobacco

And...two links to SEC info about just where CIGNA and MetLife have had (and likely still have) very large investments. They even invest heavily in the War Machine...not to mention virtually every environmentally-destructive and health-damaging biz on Wall Street.

Who would opt to trust THEM to administer our or our families' health care? Who asks that question in polls?

One might think that instead of us giving them money, those for-profit insurers ought be mandated to compensate millions of harmed, Guinea-pigged individuals, if not the public at large, for the harms caused by their properties. A case can be made that, ironically perhaps, health insurers ought pay, out of their own pockets, for Single Payer. No need for dreaded taxes then.

SEC Info on MetLife

SEC Info on CIGNA