Corps put on Spot re Healthcare Reform

This is a bit of good news. Faith based Investors have written to members of the United States Chamber of Commerce who claim to support health care reform asking them to clarify their positions. The Chamber is actively campaigning against health reform.

Here is an anti reform ad put out by the Chamber:

Nothing ambiguous there and not a nuanced position. As far as I know this is the line they have stuck to, unlike say, climate change where they are currently twisting themselves up like a pretzel to stop members leaving in droves.

This is the list of the companies being targeted:

Aetna; American Express; AT&T; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Cardinal Health; Cisco Systems; Duke Energy; DuPont; Eli Lilly; Exxon Mobil; General Electric; General Mills; Goldman Sachs; Home Depot; IBM; Kellogg; Kohl’s; Manpower; Marriott; McDonald’s; Medco; Merck; Peabody; Pepsi; Pfizer; Safeway; Staples; Starbucks; Target; 3 M; UnitedHealth Group; United Technologies; Verizon; Walmart; Wellpoint; and Xerox.

And here is the communication that the interfaith group has sent basically asking the companies above to state unambiguously whether the Chamber of Commerce is speaking for them or not.

“Does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce speak for [your corporation] when it opposes healthcare reform? As members of the faith community and concerned investors we have been troubled by the efforts of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to undermine efforts to curb global warming. We are equally concerned that the same tactics seem evident in the Chamber’s attempts to undermine efforts to bring about a just health care system available to all citizens. Given the position that the Company has taken in endorsing core precepts for healthcare reform, we are asking you in this letter to communicate in a clear public voice whether or not the Chamber has your ‘proxy’ when it comes to healthcare reform policy…

As shareholders in major companies threatened by a broken health care system, we are united in our view that that the status quo in health care is unsustainable. It has runaway cost increases, presents great risk for employers as well as employees and leaves millions uninsured … Given the current campaign of the Chamber of Commerce, we ask you to provide answers to these questions: (1) Does the Company agree with the Chamber’s campaign in opposition to health care reform? (2) Will the Company publicly distance itself from the Chamber’s position in opposition to health care reform? (3) What are the Company’s plans to contribute in a constructive way to the health care debate going forward?”

Both the letter and the list of companies: Huffington Post

I like this a lot for several reasons:

It is investor driven meaning that real money is at stake for these companies
It is good to see a religious group take the side of the people and not the establishment
It is really good politics, spot the inconsistency then drive the stake in hard.

More on the group behind this initiative,The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility can be found here

ICCR members believe that as responsible stewards they must invest their saved resources — pensions and endowments — in ways that are consistent with their faith values. Since their faith calls them to promote peace, economic justice and stewardship of the universe, they believe they should not profit from production or sale of unsafe or harmful products; from exploitation of human weakness; from violation of human rights, production for war, racism, sexual exploitation or destruction of the environment and so on. They believe they should encourage safe and healthy production methods, forgiveness of debt for poor nations and investment in sustainable development, equal employment opportunity, diversity in management and in boards of directors and payment of living wages.