Woefully Inadequate Healthcare Reform Bill Passes in Senate

You gotta be disgusted with the passage of the Senate healthcare “reform” bill over the weekend. Besides the inclusion of severe restrictions on womens’ rights to abortions which sets back womens’ rights by 25 years, it also passed without any public option or Medicare buy-in. What’s left is a giveaway to the pigs at a trough that I like to refer to as the ”death by spreadsheet” industry. I am not buying the spin from Democratic leadership that this is an historic advancement and not a steaming pile of unmentionable garbage.

All you need to know about whether or not the Senate’s passage of their “reform” bill contains any real measure to lower the costs of health care for Americans can be derived from looking at the stock prices of the major insurers today after the passage of the bill this weekend.

Aetna (AET) Today their stock is at its highest trading price of the year.

Cigna (CI) Today their stock price is at its highest trading price of the year.

Wellpoint (WLP) Today their stock price is at its highest trading price of the year.

United Healthcare (UNH) Today their stock price is at its highest trading price of the year.

If there was any chance that the “reform” passed by the Senate was going to rein in profits on this egregious industry, these stock prices would have been headed downward. Take any and all celebratory language emanating from Congressional Democrats with a huge grain of salt. Spin is spin. The stock market does not view the world through any lens besides the lens of profit and loss. Investors in aggregate understand that this sham of a bill does much more to boost the fortunes of insurers than it does to help the average citizen stay healthy or heal when sick (without going bankrupt). Plus, women get to lose more reproductive freedom. Contemptible!