By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

You read it here first: about how certain good old Southern states still allow morticians to operate ambulances on the side. Kind of the ultimate two-fer. Now there’s more: the very same folks who have been standing like Goliath in the way of healthcare reform (because it’s already so bloody profitable to them as is) have found a whole, new, lucrative way to make money.

Big Insurance, namely big so-called “Health Insurance” is now investing in Big Tobacco, big time. $4.4 billion to be exact, according to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine. “But, but,” you might splutter, “this means insurance is putting profits ahead of health.” Hello? Isn’t that what they’ve been doing all along, and fully intend to keep on doing with the full consent of the United States Congress, White House, and everybody else who has a nickel invested in the outcome?

According to the study, one U.S. insurer, Prudential Financial Inc., has $264.3 million invested in R.J. Reynolds America and Philip Morris. The Canadian health insurer, Sun Life Financial Inc., has more than $1 billion in two tobacco companies, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability insurance, has $1.38 billion in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. Other U.S. firms with heavy investments in tobacco include Northwestern Mutual and Massachusetts Mutual Life. The recent government decision to finally regulate tobacco under the FDA (a no-brainer, despite the fact that Big Tobacco managed to evade such regulation throughout history) might seem in order, given that nicotine is the most powerful addictive drug there is next to heroin, according to centuries worth of studies. But it won’t affect this new line of profiteering at all.

According to the study’s author, Wes Boyd, Big Insurance is simply covering their bets. "Although investing in tobacco while selling life or health insurance may seem self-defeating, insurance firms have figured out ways to profit from both," Boyd wrote. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit - and smokers lose - twice over."

“No problem,” the savvy smoker might think to him or herself. “I’ll just fudge on the forms, where it says check here: ‘do you smoke?’ and check ‘no.’” Then you can avoid those higher premiums and still be covered. Who’d know? Well, they will. As soon as you show up in the cancer ward with black lungs and nicotine stained teeth and fingers, all those premiums you’ve been paying are out the window because you fibbed, and they aren’t going to pay a red cent for your treatment. So if anything, they are hoping you will lie. Please lie! They will practically implore you. Then they can void your coverage for everything else too, and just try to get those hefty premiums you were already paying back. Just try. That’s what high priced corporate lawyers are for, after all (you didn’t think they were for you, did you?).

As long as these insurers, their lobbyists and well-paid stooges in Congress continue to dominate the debate, they are going to continue calling the shots when it comes to your health, lack thereof, or any rights you might have to do anything about it.

You can always vote, of course. But didn’t we just do that? It seems we learned long ago, as we are relearning now, that money talks way louder than votes. Voters are going to have to find a way to out shout the lobbyists for a place at the table, when it comes to any kind of reform whatsoever to our broken healthcare system. It may look broke to we the people, who are rapidly going broke trying to pay for it all. But for those on the receiving end, those beneficiaries of the four levels of profiteering still firmly locked in place and standing squarely in the way of actual healthcare reform, they will do whatever it takes, and they have what it takes to do so, to block any real changes. Profits will continue to take priority over health. It’s the American way.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His latest book is A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. He can be found at: www.geneayres.org.