Flatliners

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while – I have been following several health care stocks, not to buy or anything like that, but rather because I think they are a good gauge of how much “reform” is really in store for us.

Other people do this sort of thing better than me, but below are five lines – the DJIA – I converted May 31, 2009 to $70 from $8500 so that it would fit on the graph, just to give an idea of the relative movement of several selected health insurance stocks to the overall market trends.

The light blue line at the top is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The dark blue line is Wellpoint, and the other three, relatively interchangeable, are Aetna, CIGNA, and United Health. Their stocks trade at very similar prices.

On October 26, Harry Reid announced that the public option would be in the Senate bill. On October 27, Joe Lieberman said he would help filibuster it. And today, the House announced their health care bill.

The market response? Flat line.

I take my cue from that. Nothing going on in Washington is going to affect the health insurance business, and from that I conclude that we will continue to be screwed.