Health Insurance Companies Invest in Fast Food!

You might think that any industry that’s supposed to be concerned with people’s health would be circumspect about where they placed their investment money.  But this isn’t necessarily so. Harvard Medical School researchers have found that health insurance companies owned almost $2 billion worth of stock in the fast food industry, as of June last year.  The report is online in the American Journal of Public Health.

The authors of the report are from the organization Physicians for a National Health Program, so they might be expected to have a bias against the insurance companies.  However, they analyzed shareholder status from the Icarus database, which is based on SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings.  The 5 largest fast-food companies – McDonald’s, Yum! Brands, Burger King, Jack in the Box, and Wendy’s/Arby’s – had $1.9 billion worth of stock held by health insurance companies.

Northwestern Mutual ($422 million), ING, a Dutch life and disability insurance company ($406 million), Massachusetts Mutual ($367 million), and Prudential Financial ($356 million) were the largest holders.

The scientists point out that these insurance companies are ‘hedging their bets’; they make money by directly investing in fast food companies, and, less directly, by charging higher health premiums to people who are obese, have diabetes, high blood pressure, and so on, often due to too much fast food consumption.

As far as I can see, the problem lies in the interpolation of for-profit health insurance companies between the patient and their treatment. One cannot expect competing companies to ignore their fiduciary duty to stockholders – i.e. to maximize profits.  If that means investing in fast foods, so be it.  But such companies should be taken out of the patient-doctor relationship, even though this clearly means single-payer financing, i.e. a genuine national health service.  (And, of course, we should all try to kick the fast-food habit.)