Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. How Insurers Value End of Public OptionFrom a posting on Baseline Scenario (from a few weeks ago, reposted by Mark Thoma at Economist's View) by Arindrajit Dube, who will be joining our friends and comrades at U-Mass Amherst soon. Here's a tidbit:President Obama may have harsh words for the insurance companies. But those are not the words investors in these companies are paying attention to. They are paying attention to whether President Obama will sign a bill with vague "co-ops" or demand a public option. And the reaction by these investors bodes poorly for "co-ops" fulfilling their role as a serious competitive alternative to private insurance companies. This guest post was written by Arindrajit Dube, an economist at UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment who is joining the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His work focuses on labor and health economics topics, as well as political economy. Why have pivotal members of the Congress been reluctant to allow individuals the choice to buy into a public health insurance option? A political-economic reason is that the "bipartisan" group of six senators responds more to the interests of health insurance companies than public opinion, including the median voter. While this is hard to assess directly (although we do know they receive substantial campaign finance from insurance companies), we can however observe the effects of (a somewhat unanticipated) decision they made on those who stand to privately benefit from that decision. Here is how the share prices of three major insurance companies (Cigna, United Healthcare Group, Aetna) responded on Tuesday, July 28 to the Monday night announcement that the group of six senators is going to eliminate the public option from their version of the health care reform legislation [graph produced using Yahoo Finance]. We have basically an 8-10 percent gain for these companies from the Senate announcement. And as the graph below shows, the S&P 500 index (yellow) was essentially flat. The market caps of these three companies together are around $53 billion, which suggests a $4-5 billion value from the announcement by the group of 6. Read the rest of the post Labels: Arindrajit Dube, Barack Obama, Baseline Scenario, Economist's View, health care, insurance industry, public option Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
