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pampango

(24,692 posts)
Sat Jul 14, 2012, 01:33 PM Jul 2012

Shareholders complain: Aetna Insurance Donated to Anti-Obamacare Campaigns in 2010

A group of Aetna shareholders is challenging the health insurer for donating to the American Action Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — two organizations dedicated to undermining Obamacare.

Aetna donated over $7 million to the two groups during the Democrats’ effort to enact health care reform, though the contributions did not become public until this year, when the company accidentally “made the disclosure in a year-end regulatory filing with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.”

In a latter to Aetna on Monday, the shareholders claim that the company did not comply with disclosure policies or inform its investors about the donations:

“We believe Aetna is not in compliance with its corporate political and lobbying disclosure policy, a policy which we negotiated and expected would be met in spirit and in letter,” read the Monday letter to Aetna CEO and President Mark Bertolini from Mercy Investment Services Inc. and the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, two Catholic groups with investments in Aetna. [...]


http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/07/14/517291/aetna-shareholders-dismayed-over-insurers-donations-to-anti-obamacare-campaigns/

Something in ACA must have scared Aetna executives. They not only donated to the anti-ACA campaign during congressional debate on it, but broke commitments it had previously made regarding disclosure of its lobbying expenditures. Interesting.
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Shareholders complain: Aetna Insurance Donated to Anti-Obamacare Campaigns in 2010 (Original Post) pampango Jul 2012 OP
Federal legislation needed: Put 'corporate political and lobbying disclosure' ProgressiveEconomist Jul 2012 #1
k&r nt steve2470 Jul 2012 #2

ProgressiveEconomist

(5,818 posts)
1. Federal legislation needed: Put 'corporate political and lobbying disclosure'
Sat Jul 14, 2012, 04:02 PM
Jul 2012

on the agenda for publicly-traded companies. IMO if Sarbanes-Oxley can regulate corporate financial disclosure, then similar laws should govern millions of dollars in corporate bribes to support political candidates.

Not only would such laws give more power to shareholders to block "donations" to candidates and SuperPACs, but they'd also make clearer the quid-pro-quo nature of such corporate cash. In his Citizens' United dissent, Justice Stevens argued that the only reason corporations even exist, let alone make political "donations", is crass profit.

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