Want health care reform? Don’t buy Wranglers
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
That’s what Health Care for America Now, a coalition of labor and liberal activists, is suggesting. Its convoluted-but-still-valid point, as reported on NYTimes Prescriptions blog, is that popular brands like Wrangler, the North Face and Nautica are marketed by a company called VF Corporation, which is run by a guy named Eric Wiseman, who sits on the board of giant health insurer Cigna, which is trying to block reform. Thus, one way to put pressure on Cigna to back off is to boycott products of VF, and hope Wiseman persuades the rest of the board.
I don’t know how successful that will be. But I love the fact that they’re trying.
Okay, part of it may just be my own background — I’m a kid of the 60’s, one of those if-it-moves-protest-it gals, who thinks civil disobedience and boycotts are the answer to everything including H1N1.
But I’m also applauding the move, as quixotic as it might be, because it shows how people who, on the surface, are way above the healthcare fray, actually are immersed in it. There’s a huge interconnection among the special interests in the health care reform arena. It behooves people on all sides to look beyond vocal congressmen or insurance execs to see where they can in fact apply pressure.
If shareholders of VF wind up getting hurt by the boycott, they may look at the need for health care reform in a different light. Apply that to many more companies, and many more groups of shareholders, and you might actually add a lot more influential rich people to the grassroots support for reform. And wouldn’t that be something for which to give thanks this holiday season….
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Wonderful idea as it may actually catch their attention. And while we’re at it, I would suggest taking your investments to a company where they do not have a revolving door of CIGNA executives and where some of their funds are not heavily invested in CIGNA, like Fidelity Investments.
But how far should it go? Cigna, of course, is not the only opponent of healthcare reform. And Wiseman is the not the only director of a company opposed to said reform.
In response to another comment. See in context »By way of saying, in theory I agree that we should try to put our money into funds and companies that do not support those whose lobbying efforts run counter to the causes we support. But practically speaking, how possible is that? How much research can an investor be expected to do?
Those aren’t rhetorical questions, i sincerely do not know the answer to them. Ideas?
Claudia,
I guess that would depend on how much an investor wants to do in terms of his/her homework. There are socially responsible funds that out-perform Fidelity funds and the research to find those funds is fairly minimal. Ariel Appreciation fund is one of them.
All the health insurance giants are opposed to health care reform because they see the cash cow that is this corrupt industry–and it is corrupt–coming to an end. Investors will have to find other ways to make money; where health and life are not a means to a profitable end.
And just as Medicare and Social Security were opposed–by the same exact arguments we are hearing today–it’s repeating itself but this time we’re hearing it in a YouTube world.
In response to another comment. See in context »We certainly agree about socially-responsible funds. The problem, of course, is that many of them look at specific criteria, not at others. A green fund, for example, will not invest in a company that pollutes or that opposes curbs on greenhouse gases — but probably did not check out the health care stance of each of the companies, and almost certainly did not check the stances of every company on whose board an executive sits. By the same token, the funds that in the days of apartheid refused to invest in any company that did business in South Africa probably did not check the pollution track record, or even the labor practice track record, of the companies that got a clean bill of health on the apartheid issue.
In response to another comment. See in context »The GOP has done a masterful job over the years of getting their people energized against anything “liberal” so why not do the same to their pocketbooks; you know how the GOP loves their money it will certainly get their attention in a hurry- great idea
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of VF’s shareholders were Republicans? In a perfect world, they would be.
In response to another comment. See in context »