Not a VEEP episode... Real life DC intensity has hurt healthcare stocks all year. While the broader stock market (the S&P 500) is up 16% in 2019, healthcare stocks are down 1%. That lack of fun stretched from patient to pill the past five trading days:
- Health insurance: Cigna (-14%), UnitedHealth (-12%), and Anthem (-18%)
- Pharmaceuticals: Pfizer (-7%), Eli Lily (-8%)
There's nowhere to hide... New business regulation usually gets pushed by one side of the political spectrum. But two very old, very different New Yorkers are trapping healthcare execs:
- The left: Bernie Sanders wants to eliminate private health insurance completely, replacing the health-care middlewoman with a government-run system.
- The right: To shame pharma firms into lowering (often exorbitant) prices, President Trump's admin is exploring new rules to stick drug prices clearly on labels and in commercials.
US healthcare's been un-fixable so far... The cost to keep an American healthy is double the cost for humans in other developed economies. Health insurance makes customers oblivious to treatment prices. And competition-less, patent-protected drugs let pharma firms charge anything. But healthcare profits have always seemed to beat healthcare reform proposals.