Health Care Stocks Climb in Wake of Reform Passage

The only meaningful reform for healthcare would be policies that take aim to reduce costs in the dysfunctional healthcare market.

For instance, by cutting state-line restrictions and allowing healthcare insurers the ability to sell coverage anywhere in the United States, and by decoupling healthcare insurance from employment agreements (that is, allowing consumers to buy coverage just as they do auto insurance), this would provide a tremendous rise in competition and thus lower healthcare premiums.

Such actions, however, are not favored by the healthcare insurance industry, so we’ll have to wait for a real crisis in the healthcare market to occur before substantive reform starts.

In the meantime, I must ask: If this recent healthcare reform that was rammed through the House of Representatives over the weekend truly has any meaning in terms of reducing costs, then why are healthcare stocks on the rise today?

[Via http://the-small-r.com]