For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – March 23, 2010 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Humana (HUM), Tenet Health Care (THC), Pfizer (PFE), Aetna (AET) and WellPoint (WLP).
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Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog:
Health Care Reform Passes
There are some losers in the bill as well as winners. The Medicare Advantage program will be cut back, so some seniors will lose the extra benefits that those provide. The Medicare Advantage program costs the government substantially more per person than regular Medicare does. For the health insurance companies that relied heavily on this area, such as Humana (HUM) it is bad news.
Not all the health insurance companies were big players in that arena, though. For many, the prospect of more customers (and customers that are legally required to buy the product) will outweigh the loss of the Medicare Advantage subsidy program. On the other hand, all seniors will see the closing of the “donut hole” in their drug coverage.
Medicare taxes will for the first time include capital (or unearned) income for high-income people. This will effectively raise dividend and capital gains tax rates for high-income people, but only for high-income people. However, at the margin, this might be a negative for stocks overall. Still there is a big differential between capital income and income from paychecks, so I don’t think the effect will be all that significant.
The market is taking the news of passage in stride, and the health care sector is leading the market higher today. Some of the biggest gainers are the hospital companies like Tenet Health Care (THC) and the drug companies like Pfizer (PFE), while the health insurance companies like Aetna (AET) and WellPoint (WLP) are mixed.
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