Salon.com

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Healthcare industry stocks explode as bill progresses

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

 

The Senate passed its health care bill "by standing up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades and who are furiously lobbying against it now" -- Barack Obama, December 21, 2009.

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"'Healthcare shares rose on Monday as a bill to reform healthcare passed the first critical test in the Senate . . . Shares of Cigna rose 5.3 percent to $37.69. Shares of Aetna Inc rose 5.84 percent to $34.41. Humana Inc rose 3.79 percent to $45.17 and United Health Group Inc rose 5 percent to $33.14. Shares of Wellpoint Inc rose 3.8 percent to $60.51" -- Reuters, yesterday, with this ironic headline:  "Healthcare shares rise as reform bill progresses".

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"Investors are seeing the Senate's version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies -- and as a result, are sending the sector's stock prices shooting up, up, up. . . . Stripped of a government-run insurance plan, the bill would give tens of millions of Americans no option but to start paying hefty premiums to private companies.

 

The rise in stock prices has been particularly striking in the period since Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said on October 27 that he would filibuster a Senate health care reform bill if it included a public option . . .

More . . .
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