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Where "Health" Insurers Invest

by Watchdog | 01.06.2009

Philadelphia-based Cigna health insurance corporation is laying off 1100 employees....but news stories don't cover some inconvenient probable reasons. We are not supposed to know that such insurers are huge investors in Wall Street...using what was our health care money.

Article in Jan 6 Inquirer about Cigna laying off a lot of workers.   Article didn't mention whether or not Cigna's stock holdings' performance had anything to do with that.
                    http://www.philly.com/philly/business/37132284.html
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   It would be difficult to find out at the SEC what Cigna owns this very day...but previous litanys of  large Cigna investments have been in, among others, Haliburton, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrup Grumman, Rockwell, GE, Philip Morris, Reynolds, Monsanto, ADM, Dow, DuPont, Rohm/Haas, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Exxon, Sunoco, Unocal, Chevron/Texaco, Occidental, Weyerhauser, Plum Creek, Massey Coal, Arch Coal, Freeport-McMoRan, Bayer (a top tobacco pesticide mfgr) and even Cigna's competitor (?) MetLife.
   (Investments, if any, in less-harmful organizations like the Mafia or al Qaeda were not listed.)

  A check of how those stocks fared since September would offer a clue about how Cigna did with those holdings and perhaps partly explain reason for lay-offs.

  This is a part of the Private Insurance Problem...that to whatever degree, our proper health care depends on the "health" of Wall Street...some of the worst actors on Wall Street at that.     Private national health insurance is as bad an idea as Privatized Social Security.... or ANY privatized public service.

     It is troubling to the point of intolerable that a  Health Care Administration biz is invested in so many health Damaging industries.. .not to mention the raft of worker abuses and environmental destruction and complicity in illegal "wars".   

     If there was no other good reason for Single Payer..ASAP. ..this investment conflict of interest issue is more than sufficient.

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