We The People... Are Screwed

So the Senate passes a health care reform package, which is supposed to improve access to health care for all Americans, and reign in the wildly escalating costs. Should be a negative for the health insurance companies, right? Yet the health care industry is seeing its stock values soar.

Here's a quick breakdown of major health insurance company stock performance from October 27 to Friday's market close:

• Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;
• CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;
• Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;
• WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;
• UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;
• And Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent.
  

By comparsion, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is only up 2.3 percent during that time; the NASDAQ Composite is up a (relatively) paltry 1.4 percent.


In addition to the spike in stock prices over the past month and a half, there is the rise in stock prices on Monday, after the bill cleared the next hurdle in the Senate, and, moved closer to passage. Of course, after reading the analysis by an analyst at Oppenheimer, it is easy to understand why.

"All in all, relative to the last version of health reform issued by the Senate, things have turned out pretty well for the health insurance industry," said Carl McDonald, an analyst at Oppenheimer. "In particular, all versions of a government-run health plan have largely been eliminated."

Couple that with the fact that lobbying firms are on pace to surpass last years $3.3 billion dollars
spent influencing Congress, and it becomes obvious who the winners are in this game.
Quick hint: It is not the American people.