According to Don Johnson of The Health Care Blog:
Speculators seem to be betting that a watered down health insurance reform bill won’t hurt health insurers, hospitals, drug makers or medical device and supply manufacturers.
Stocks for almost all of these health sectors and for exchange trade funds that track health stock indexes turned higher last week.
In other words, those with real money at stake don’t believe that health reform will hurt the firms that make a living off of America’s highly inefficient health sector — President Obama’s assurances notwithstanding.
Johnson provides seven possible explanations for this development, including:
3. If the very liberal Coastal Democrats who lead Congress and most of the five committees drafting health insurance legislation want to get the support of Democrats from Western, Midwestern and Southern states, they’ll have to up Medicare payments to providers in those states. This is bullish for hospital chains, which operate mostly in the fly-over states…
6. Proposals to tax millionaires to pay for covering the uninsured and increasing benefits for others are in trouble, if not dead on arrival. The economy’s in no shape to be stalled by tax hikes, and there appear to be enough Democrats opposed to the tax to stop it.
7. While the so-called Blue Dog Democrats are stalling health insurance reform for economic and ideological reasons, the Congressional Black Caucus has made it clear that it won’t support a bill that the Blue Dogs will support. Throw in the opposition by anti-abortionists who don’t want the legislation to use taxpayers money to pay for abortions, and you have a pretty complex political problem for President Obama, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D‑NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑CA). While the Speaker claimed Sunday that she has the votes to pass health insurance reform, few believe her.
