Ending the filibuster on the Senate “reform” bill is a victory for the healthcare industry.

The Obama Administration and Congressional leadership are claiming an historic victory in passing a cloture motion on the Senate bill, but it looks to me like the Administration and Congress lost every important negotiation with the healthcare industry, if indeed there ever was a serious effort to rein it in. Stock prices for the Health Care sector rose more in the last three months—when these "negotiations" were going on—than any other sector of the economy.

Current Sector Weighting Performance & Percentages*

Sector	Actual Market Weighting	1 Day Perfor mance	1 Week Perfor mance	1 Month Perfor mance	3 Month Perfor mance	YTD Perfor mance	1 Year Perfor mance
Telecommunication Services	2.75%	0.22%	-2.32%	4.59%	4.36%	2.20%	3.53%
Utilities	3.80%	0.45%	-0.51%	6.98%	5.67%	9.61%	10.25%
Consumer Staples	10.91%	-0.30%	-2.05%	-2.05%	3.76%	11.42%	12.22%
Energy	11.34%	0.28%	0.30%	-4.50%	1.36%	11.30%	14.20%
Financials	14.93%	1.39%	-0.92%	-4.98%	-6.17%	16.62%	15.83%
Health Care	12.72%	0.26%	-0.25%	2.70%	7.83%	17.55%	19.67%
Industrials	10.98%	-0.19%	-0.63%	-0.02%	2.38%	19.96%	21.46%
Consumer Discretionary	10.09%	0.53%	0.04%	1.65%	6.36%	39.94%	38.09%
Materials	3.88%	0.09%	-0.91%	-2.88%	0.39%	42.99%	38.67%
Information Technology	18.61%	1.56%	1.05%	0.43%	7.44%	56.99%	56.89%

* Performance: END OF DAY DATA, AS OF 12/18/09  4:00 PM ET. Sector Weighting: AS OF 12/16/09  4:00 PM ET. Downloaded from Fidelity 12/21/09.

Joe Scarborough and others make the same point here.

UPDATE 12/21/09 AT 1:30 P.M.:  Today was the first trading day after the Senate cloture vote.  While the S&P 500 index rose 1.05%, the five largest health insurance companies racked up these gains:  UnitedHealth Group, 2.00%; Wellpoint, 2.92%; Aetna, 4.71%; Humana, 3.47%; and Cigna, 3.94%.  If we ever get the reform we need, those numbers will move the other way. 

Update on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 06:36AM by Skeptic

The "Healthcare Providers and Services" subsector of Health Care rose 2.15% yesterday vs. 1.05% for the S&P 500.  In the last 3 months, this subsector rose 11.86% vs. 4.64% for the S&P 500. 

Sector Performance Against Benchmarks

AS OF 12/21/2009  4:00 PM ET

Sector or Benchmark	1 Day	1 Week	1 Month	3 Month	YTD	1 Year	3 Year	5 Year
Health Care Providers & Services	2.15%	1.83%	8.27%	11.86%	37.47%	39.69%	-7.33%	23.03%
NASDAQ	1.17%	1.16%	4.27%	4.66%	44.30%	43.04%	-7.38%	4.03%
Russell 3000	1.07%	0.24%	2.72%	4.26%	27.31%	27.61%	-20.66%	-5.38%
S&P 500	1.05%	-0.01%	2.08%	4.64%	25.08%	25.47%	-21.45%	-7.58%

Update on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 09:58AM by Skeptic

Reuters has posted a summary of Winners, losers in U.S. Senate health bill.  Health insurers are described as "losers" because of certain provisions in the bill that could, depending on how they are implemented, limit profits, but obviously those who make the stock market think profits are likely to improve. 

Update on Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 09:27AM by Skeptic

Goldman Sachs is recommending that investors buy shares in two big insurance companies, the UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, because insurance rates are up sharply and competition is down, according to this NYT report.

The Goldman Sachs analysis shows that while insurers can be aggressive in raising prices, they also walk away from clients because competition in the industry is so weak, the White House said. And officials will point to a finding that rate increases ran as high as 50 percent, with most in “the low- to mid-teens” — far higher than overall inflation.

Employers, who are in large part the victims of these insurers' growing market power don't see the pending healthcare reform legislation as a solution.

Asked by Goldman analysts about the effort to pass major health care legislation, Mr. Lewis [an insurance broker representing employers] said many employers experiencing increases in their insurance costs were nonetheless apprehensive about the president’s proposal.

“They’re very mixed in their reaction, quite candidly consistent with what we’re seeing in the polling numbers by party lines,” Mr. Lewis said. “I think most people would acknowledge that there’s a need for health care reform; employers continue to be very frustrated. So when they look at what the Obama administration and the Democratic majority state as their goals to increase access and lower cost and rail at what may be termed oligopolistic behavior of carriers in certain markets, I think employers really buy in to that message and have much of that frustration and anger at our lack of solutions.”

And yet, he said, there is little enthusiastic support from employers for the Democrats’ proposals.

“Many of them still view the legislation and the partisanship coming out of Washington as possibly the medicine worse than the disease,” he said. “So many employer groups that we’re talking to feel like it would be a shame to lose an opportunity to do something with respect to health care reform. But many are starting to feel like maybe nothing is better than something in this current environment.”