AT A GLANCE: Most Health-Care Stocks Close Up After Overhaul OK

[Lorien]

THE NEWS: Most health-care stocks led the stock market higher Monday after the U.S. House Sunday approved a historic health-care overhaul designed to bring health insurance to 32 million more Americas while subjecting U.S. industries to a dramatically redrawn and newly regulated marketplace. President Barack Obama likely will sign the bill into law Tuesday.

MARKET ACTION:

The health-care sector led U.S. stocks higher as investors expressed relief that a big uncertainty for the market was largely removed.

The Dow's drug makers posted strong gains. Pfizer (PFE) rose 1.4% and Merck ( MRK) gained 0.6%. Tenet Healthcare (THC) jumped 9%, while Medtronic (MDT) rose 2.3%, St. Jude Medical (STJ) increased 1.1% and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) advanced 1.8%.

Medicaid managed-care companies Amerigroup Corp. (AGP), Molina Healthcare Inc. (MOH) and Centene Corp. (CNC) closed up 4.6%, 3.6% and 10.6%, respectively.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201003221629dowjonesdjonline000371&title=at-a-glancemost-health-care-stocks-close-up-after-overhaul-ok

[cherokeeprogressive]

1. Shhhh

It's the in elephant the room that no one wants to talk about. It's not like we didn't or shouldn't have seen it coming though.

You know what would be REALLY interesting? To see a complete list of investors in every health insurance company traded on the Dow.

[wtmusic]

2. A complete list of every investor in ONE Dow insurance company

would be millions of entries long.

If you have a pension or any kind of mutual fund you are likely an investor in a health insurance company.

Personally, I hope the insurance companies that are willing to play ball and provide the insurance people need, when they need it, profit handsomely.

[EFerrari]

3. The problem is, they only make $ by denying care. I'm math impaired

but not THAT impaired.

[wtmusic]

4. There's no reason why insurance companies can't make money

honestly. From charging a large pool of customers more than they pay out to a few, and calling it profit.

No one needs to have care denied.

[EFerrari]

5. There's no reason why Michael Corleone can't go straight, either.

I'm sorry to be flippant but, seriously, that's what comes to mind.

[wtmusic]

6. I don't buy that they're all crooks.

They play the system (sometimes entirely legally) like all companies do. The system is being watched more closely now, and the ones that still play by the old rules will go down.

Insurance has a lot to offer - if it's regulated it can be the best of both private enterprise and socialism (unregulated it becomes the worst of both). It employs a lot of people, and it spreads risk out among an entire population, which is very socialist in principle.

I'm probably one of the few people here who believes this legislation could create a model that will spread to other countries, and work even better than single payer.

[EFerrari]

8. There are countries that use this model but their insurance industry

really is tightly regulated and, iirc, they're non-profits.

I myself have not seen anything like a will, let alone the follow through, to regulate anything very well. If anything, the trend still seems to be see how much you can get away with, even in this economy. What is left to steal, I don't know.

I don't trust the insurance industry. They have been busted way too many times for all kinds of horrible abuses. They're not going to grow a halo overnight. And by extension, I can't trust anyone who asks me to trust the insurance industry. I've known too many Spaniards.

[wtmusic]

9. LOL I don't know where the Spaniard thing comes from, but...

there is a gray area between public/private which IMO has the possibility to radically change the way service-oriented business is provided in this country.

I met a woman last week who worked for a semi-private group, akin to Fannie Mae, which provides low-cost insurance to homeowners to help pay their mortgage if they lose their job. I never even knew that this group existed before. They get money from premiums and the federal government, and are doing what all insurance companies should be doing - providing a valuable service, providing jobs, and making money.

So please forgive but I'm on a little bit of an optimism kick right now. :D

[EFerrari]

10. It's from the Princess Bride.

"Will you take my word as a Spaniard?"

"Sorry, I've known too many Spaniards".

[laughingliberal]

11. Our for profits have been trying to worm their way into other countries for a while

Most of the people aware of this in other countries are horrified at the thought. Most of them are much better at getting out in the streets and raising a ruckus if they think they're about to be robbed.

Please don't wish the evils of our system on a working class in another country who have avoided living their lives enslaved to jobs or private health insurance companies. I know misery loves company but that's taking it a little too far.

[laughingliberal]

12. They may not all be crooks but I've never dealt with any that aren't

Not my insurance companies, nor the companies insuring my patients, nor any company I've ever known a UR nurse for. It was like a damned 2nd job trying to get my insurance company to pay claims. If they couldn't get away with outright denials, they'd tie you up in delays asking for more paperwork or claiming they didn't get the form you faxed to them, I kid you not, 14 times in 2 months. Same thing my patients went through.

I've had friends that were nurses with insurance companies working to review files and decide whether to cover a treatment or procedure or not. They lived in fear of 'their numbers' and worried every time they approved something expensive even if it was, obviously, needed. Their jobs were always on the line if they crossed over and approved too much.

If there are some companies which are not crooks, they are a very miniscule minority.

[wtmusic]

14. You turn a kid loose in a candy store, and...

(I believe every word you say).

Insurance companies. If they aren't being crooks, they're exploiting every loophole they can to suck the public dry. Just like every successful business, except in this case their customers are extremely vulnerable and often their lives are at stake. What industry better suited to regulation?

On the flip side, my sister in law is a chiropractor who boasted of her ability to double- and triple-bill insurance companies, and get away with it (there's nothing specific to single payer which prevents this, btw). Of course she got ripped off by insurance companies so she believed she had the right to rip them off...and we end up with a race to the bottom with consumers footing the bill.

If we create incentives for companies AND providers which run their businesses reputably, and we create the mechanism to know whether they are or not (it's the 21st century, ferchrissake) this can work.

[laughingliberal]

18. There are providers at fault, too. No doubt about it

Hospital corps being at the top of that list. Not only are their prices criminally inflated, they also are the ones found to have engaged in more fraud than other providers and industries. Yet, their powerful lobby keeps them largely protected. Every time the government talks about going after waste, fraud, and abuse they go after home health and don't look at a hospital until someone hits them over the head with it. Cute, huh? Go after an industry that actually saves them money in the long run to protect the ones who are spending the money on a bunch of crap that helps no one.

And we think this is the government that will be able to detect the fraud of the insurance industry and enforce any penalties? Not to mention the penalties are a joke. $100 per day if they turn down a patient with a preexisting condition. $36,500 a year to avoid a patient with a condition that runs over $100,000? What would you do?

The weak regulations and loopholes throughout this bill made it clear to me, in reading the bill, that the goal is not to rein in the insurance companies but, rather, to tell us they did without upsetting 'bidness' too much. Here is Wendall Potter's take on that:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

O'DONNELL: "Is there anyone currently employed in the U.S. government - at the IRS, or in the HHS - who knows how to enforce this; how to go into an insurance company and figure out what their real medical loss ratio is?"

POTTER: "No, I don't think so. At least I haven't come across them. One of the things I have learned over the last six months is that there is very, very little understanding in Washington about how commercial health insurance companies work, including on Capitol Hill. The exceptions are Sen. Rockefeller and his team..."

[wtmusic]

19. A lot of work ahead.

IMO we're treading on new ground. If Obama's going to make this work it's going to require followup: devising a way to audit insurance companies and get an accurate loss ratio.

Yes I do think this is the government that will be able to detect the fraud of the insurance industry and enforce penalties. Obama's re-election could be on the line, and very few thought HCR had any chance of passing to begin with (if insurance companies held that much sway this would have never seen the light of day).

[laughingliberal]

20. As it stands now the enforcement is left, largely, in the hands of the states

who have not been able to do the job very effectively so far. Even CA who had some of the strictest regulation and enforcement in the country has found it next to impossible to enforce their mandated MLR.

I really don't like living in the Corporate States of American and I'm really kicking myself now I didn't emigrate when I was still able. With the theft of the 2000 election I realized we were not going to turn things back in this country and I had held out too long working and believing we would. I was 1 year over the age any country would take me as an occupation of preference. Guess I'm left to slog along the best I can for now trying to fight the system and hoping they'll throw a few of the crumbs back down to us now and then.

edited typo

[eridani]

13. The reason is that they are not regulated now, and will not be after "reform"

In other countries with mandated private insurance, the government straightforwardly DICTATES premium rates for a single comprehensive benefits package (none of this Platinum and Bronze horseshit), and often provider rates as well. In 1996 in the Netherlands, an emergency root canal cost my husband 100 guilders, or $25 American. According to Health Care Around the World, a night's hospital stay in Japan in $20.

[wtmusic]

16. If health care worked so well in the Netherlands they wouldn't have

switched to an entirely different system in 2006, which is actually very similar to Obama's plan.

There are a number of problems with it, but they are very agressively trying to plug the holes in the dike as it were. We can learn a lot from their mistakes.

[eridani]

27. You mean insurance companies can charge whatever they like now?

According to Wikipedia, it's still 100 euros/month. And AFAIK they still control provider costs. Where does it say that Dutch practitioners can now charge whatever they feel like? I'm pretty sure it's more than $25 for a root canal now, though.

[BeFree]

17. Yep

That is the next step.... cost controls. That's where we are headed. Keep pushing.

"If you push something hard enough it will fall over"

[eridani]

28. They don't have the will to impose cost controls now, but they will

--AFTER we give insurance companies a trillion dollars of public money?

[Winterblues]

15. Kramer didn't see it coming, he said the entire stock market would crash if it passed.

Of course their stocks went higher. They just aquired thirty million new customers with the full backing of the US government.. What more could any company wish for?

[TransitJohn]

23. 30 million more customers, AND more importantly

NO PRICE CONTROLS.

[bullwinkle428]

26. Jim Cramer? If that guy told me the sun was to rise in the east

tomorrow morning, I would bet every cent to my name that it will rise in the west!!!

[andym]

7. health INSURERS were MIXED: Wellpoint, UnitedHealth Down, Cigna, Aetna up slightly

Symbol  Closing         Change          Percent Volume  Avg
Volume     Company
AET   	34.64 		+0.18 		+0.52% 	12.43M 	14.93B          Aetna
WLP 	64.39 		-0.68 		-1.04% 	8.65M 	28.58B          Wellpoint
CI 	37.28 		+0.20 		+0.54% 	4.98M 	10.25B          Cigna
UNH 	33.30 		-1.09 		-3.17% 	20.22M 	38.70B     United Health

On low volume.

[blindpig]

21. It's always about money

That's capitalism for ya.

Tear it down.

[Egnever]

22. Dumbest argument ever against health reform

Cause the guys on wall street are soooo smart and know exactly whats going to happen right? thats why they clusterfucked the entire economy right? cause they new exactly what was good for all the corporations.

Talk to me in 5 years after the bill has actually had an impact not today when people with all kinds of misinformation in their heads are making bets.

[Bluenorthwest]

24. Not an argument against reform, but against the Insurance Cos.

there is a difference you know.

[Egnever]

25. Its just a stupid argument no matter who its against.

Wall street gets it wrong over and over and over again. Hence the crash every few years. Relying on what the market does any given week as justification for any point is pure idiocy. Market fluctuations are largely a product of emotion and have little basis in reality.