Top Insurance Companies

Insurance firms spent numerous greenbacks making an attempt to defeat the U.S. health care overhaul, saying it might raise prices and disrupt coverage. Instead, profit margins at the businesses widened to levels not seen since before the recession, a Bloomberg Government study shows.

Insurers led by WellPoint, the most important by membership, recorded their highest combined quarterly internet income of the past decade when the law was signed in 2010, said Peter Gosselin, the study author and senior health care analyst for Bloomberg Government. the quality & Poor's five hundred managed health care index rose thirty six % within the amount, four times quite the S&P five hundred.

"The business that was the loudest, most persistent critic of this law, the business whose analysts and executives predicted it might suffer immensely thanks to the law, has thrived," Gosselin said. "There could be a shift to government work below manner that's about to represent a basic modification in their business model."

Health insurers contributed $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose the law when Obama administration officers criticized the plans for enriching themselves by raising client premiums.

"We stay terribly involved that major health care reform provisions that go into result on Jan. 1, 2014, can raise prices and disrupt coverage for people, families, seniors and tiny businesses," Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's Washington lobbyist, said when reading the study.

Still, the businesses saw their average operating profit margins expand to eight.24 % within the six quarters since the overhaul became law, compared with vi.88 % for the eighteen months before it had been passed.

Quarterly earnings per share from continuing operations between the third quarters of 2008 and 2011 jumped twenty nine %, and therefore the results have on average overwhelmed analyst estimates since the primary quarter of 2009. WellPoint raised its 2011 earnings forecast in October when third-quarter earnings of $1.77 a share beat by ten cents the common estimate of twenty analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

At an equivalent time, firms are changing their business focus to realize from provisions within the law which will expand the dimensions of Medicaid, the $401 billion government health arrange for the poor. "Only by substantially reshaping their businesses will they profit," the study says.

The report compares the eighteen months before and when the overhaul became law, Gosselin said. the businesses studied are WellPoint, UnitedHealth cluster, Aetna, Humana, and Cigna Corp.

Cynthia Michener of Aetna would not comment before reading the entire study. Declining to comment were Tyler Mason, a UnitedHealth spokesman, and Phil Mann from Cigna, whereas WellPoint's Jill Becher referred inquiries to America's Health Insurance Plans. Humana's Jim Turner said he would not speculate on the law's effects prior to a Feb. vi earnings decision.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/05/BUUH1MLB31.DTL#ixzz1kuVesYVj