A Few Choice Words for Prudential (or, Smoke 'em if ya got 'em!)

Saint Obama staked his candidacy, in large part, on fixing health care. Naysayers (read: Republicans) have been stoking fears (and fellating campaign contributors) by running hysterical million-dollar ads depicting the bureaucratic hell in which citizens of single-payer nations wallow.

Picture a grief-stricken woman holding a tear-stained photo of a decrepit old biddy. "Mummy waited 47 years to have her gall stones removed. Now she's dead!" (cue sentimental piano music).

Nevermind that this, the wealthiest nation on earth, is chock full of parents who forgo taking their children to a doctor so they can afford food. Also nevermind that Obama never proposed a single-payer system. But whatever.

We can toss one coin the Republican's way: tort reform is a must. If a woman goes in for a boob job and emerges from the ER with a hysterectomy, she should be able to sue. But not for a hundred million bucks; it really shouldn't be the best thing that ever happened to her. However, this is a drop in the bucket compared with the profiteering going on in the insurance racket (an industry, by the way, with oodles of salivating lackeys leashed in like hounds on K Street). Health care reform will be a tough one to pass, no ifs ands or buts.

Speaking of butts (and you KNOW how we like to speak of butts), one bit of legislation that's due to sail through Congress this week is the Tobacco Regulation Bill. Wanna guess who's against it (aside from Congressmen from Kentucky)? Yep, the insurance industry. Care to take a stab at why? It's simple: the largest insurers in this country have invested billions in tobacco. Prudential, in fact, has a whopping $264.3 million invested in cancer sticks.

As you might imagine, we have a few things to say about that.

Dear Prudential (and Allstate, Sun Life, et al):

For all your flowery language about how your products provide "peace of mind," we'd like to give you a piece of ours.

We started smoking at 18. It made us devastatingly hip, natch, and we looked too cool 4 school with a Marlboro parked in our kisser. Teenagers, of course, are hard-wired to rebel. We knew it was "bad." That was okay, like Sandy in Grease, we wanted to be "bad." We were also 18, and as you know all 18-year-olds are immortal. But yes, when we purchased that first pack of lung candy, it was our choice.

It was also our choice when, twenty years later (wheezing from a flight of stairs), we embarked on that long, torturous odyssey of quitting. We recall feeling as if a million spiders were trying to eat their way out of our skin, swearing under our labored breath that we'd sell our mother to Qaddafi for a puff. Patches, gum, hypnosis, acupuncture. Of course we started again. We quit again. Start-quit-start-quit. Now, at 45, we've been tobacco-free (with the exception of one or two bummed smokes) for three years. It's pitiful, but quitting is one of our proudest achievements.

So now, should we decide to "Get a Piece of the Rock" or entrust ourselves to the "Good Hands People" and buy, say, health coverage, or life insurance, or an annuity, or long-term care from a corporation that professes its dedication to our well-being, we're also supporting an industry that tried to (and might still) kill us. We wonder why.

Could it be that if we buy an annuity or long term care and die of lung-rot at 62, you'll save a buttload of cash? Could it be that smokers can only buy personal health insurance at a prince's ransom? Could it be that life insurance premiums for smokers are exponentially higher than for non-smokers? Ker-ching!

Like Phillip Morris, you want us to smoke. But at least the tobacco industry would likely prefer its customers to live longer so they could smoke more. You, on the other hand, are deeply vested in your customers' early demise. So unless you unload your stock in emphysema futures and bequeath it to a free clinic (like, maybe one of scores recently shuttered due to budget constraints), there's only one thing left to say:

You are vile.

xox
WAM

Pru sez: "Get a piece of this blog! Subscribe to its feed today!"

Comments

[winski]

Sorry WAM, but I think you misunderstand a couple of things...
1) If you croaked at age 62 (rather than 85) from smoking, Prudential would make a LOT less money han if you had lived. In the life insurance business, the people who die young are the ones who cost you. The life insurance guys would much rather you live to be 100 and pay them premiums for 40 extra years...
2) So why invest in tobacco? Because the returns are good. It's worth saying $260 mil isn't a lot of money in a roughly $250 bil portfolio. Insurance company's also invest (from time to time) in other nasty outfits such as Raytheon (bomb maker), Haliburton, Molson-Coors, Caterpillar, Venezuelan Gov't bonds, US Gov't bonds, etc. etc. So where do you draw the line?

[Whup-Ass Master]

Howdy Winks,
1) If you scroll up you'll see I was talking about annuities or long term care. early croakers with those policies certainly do save insurers money. Re: life insurance? Yep, but the actuaries have that covered; smokers pay much higher premiums. And you can bet the actuarial math works out in PRU's favor; they are out to make a buck, after all.
2) Why should these companies avoid tobacco? For one very simple reason: tobacco is the only product out there, when used as designed, kills you. A raytheon stockholder isn't necessarily hoping that people die, so much as the defense industry keeps spending. This is where we draw the line: Insurers shouldn't be making side-bets on the lives of their customers. If nothing else, it's truly rotten PR.

xox
WAM

[JWB3]

A beautiful piece of apologetics IMHO. I ditched insurance (of any kind) years ago, because the yearly premiums for running a farm were mind boggling. I started my own personal insurance corp and have reaped the benefits since then. Unforch, Texas is the only state this can happen.

[Flaquita]

...That was okay, like Sandy in Grease, we wanted to be "bad."

Speak for yourself chico. I always wanted to be Rizzo!!

[Whup-Ass Master]

@JWB cubed: Texas? We thought you were in nawlins.

@flaquita: Rizzo was definitely cooler, but we'd rather head into the sunset in a flying car with John Travolta, bless his retarded scientologist soul, than get stuck on a ferris wheel with Jeff Conway.

[Jan]

WAM, I started smoking when I was 14 and quit the day after I turned 45 - I've now been smoke-free (no bummed smokes at all) for 18 months. While I totally understand about the wheezing going up a flight of stairs, that wasn't my motivation - my mother, who was a lifelong smoker, suffered an aeortal aneurysm at 46, requiring open-heart surgery, then died of a massive heart-attack at 51 - she refused to quit, even after the surgery. Now that I'm 46, I feel like making it to my 47th birthday without blowing a valve will be some sort of victory. Silly, maybe, but it's how I feel.

John Travolta may be a retarded scientologist, but at least he's avoided the complete moronity that is Tom Cruise.

[Whup-Ass Master]

@Jan: Thanks for sharing your profoundly depressing story. We believe you'll reach 47 and well beyond without popping a gasket. Stay smoke-free, bitch.

And all Scientologists are retarded. We really can't budge on that point.

xox
WAM