happyone83
07-29-2009, 06:32 PM
Even though life and health insurance companies now routinely penalize smokers with higher premiums (or by refusing their business), the companies themselves own tobacco company stock worth at least $4.4 billion, according to a recent New England Journal of Medicine report. Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than 400,000 Americans die prematurely each year due in part to smoking (burdening life insurance companies but perhaps sparing health insurers from having to pay out over longer lifetimes). [Agence France-Presse, 6-4-09]