An article published in the
The study’s authors, all physicians, cite research that fast-food consumption is linked to obesity and cardiovascular disease—two leading causes of death in Americans—and say, given the importance of insurers in the nation’s health care delivery system, they ought to be held to a higher standard of corporate responsibility. In 1990s, a similar campaign convinced many health insurers to divest their holdings in tobacco companies.
The current report, compiled from
Using numbers from year-end 2008, the report cites Boston-based
“Given that we don’t report or discuss the individual investments in either our portfolios or third-party portfolios, it’s hard for us to verify the number,” Bob DeFillippo, chief communications officer for Prudential, tells Insurance Networking News. “There are financial instruments within Prudential’s portfolios that are managed for third parties. That said, we have a fiduciary duty to manage assets for consistently strong investment performance, and we do that while managing risk and investing responsibly.”
Likewise, Jean Towell, a spokesperson for Northwestern Mutual, disputes the tally, and pegs the true total of the company’s fast-food holding at the end of 2008 at $257 million. Moreover, Towell says the numbers are insignificant considering the size of the company’s portfolio. “Our goal is to have a highly diversified portfolio that provides long-term value to our policyholders,” she tells Insurance Networking News. “That $257 million represented only 0.19% of the company’s $136 billion account portfolio at the time. In today’s numbers, it’s even smaller, 0.17%.”
Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, of
All of the article’s authors are affiliated with