Obamacare Causing Insurance Stocks to Plummet

reply to post by milominderbinder


My husband's family has been getting oil royalties since the 1940s. I cannot recall when we have invested in any oil stocks (we especially dislike BP), but he watches them daily, for obvious reasons. The current pricing is getting below where the oil companies can produce a product, so the current prices (although good for people's wallets) are being kept artificially low.

I imagine this will be the case up until after the election....And then, watch out!

Oil is very easy to hate, but people aren't stopping driving or using plastic or any of the other myriad of products made from petroleum. It has permeated our world, unfortunately. I had to come to terms with my intense dislike of the oil industry when I married into his family. I have an uneasy truce with it.....I don't trust it (as I don't trust natural gas companies like Chesapeake), but as of now, it remains front and center in our economy.

Currently we are sticking to gold, gold mining, and silver as stock investments. I have no qualms with those.

reply to post by milominderbinder


Yes bubble is right and it will burst. The insurance companies took good notes from the bank bail out. Just wait and see. They will be crying poor mouth in no time and Uncle Sam is going to feed them with a silver spoon. The whole thing would be much more enjoyable to watch if like I said there were not real people attached to the ensuing tragedy.

reply to post by milominderbinder


Excellent response! It probably will result in a ridiculous bubble that is bound to burst. Hopefully we'll all be here in the year you mentioned to see if you are correct.

reply to post by Ladysophiaofsandoz


Yikes! I'll bet they will cry for a bail-out, and get it, too. Free market capitalism my dying arse!

reply to post by Destinyone


LOL Des!! A fake green card!

However, a green card will get you a taxpayer identification number. The smart way is to be an illegal in your own country....no green card, no SSN, nada. What a crazy world this has become!

Originally posted by FissionSurplus
reply to post by Destinyone

 

LOL Des!! A fake green card!

However, a green card will get you a taxpayer identification number. The smart way is to be an illegal in your own country....no green card, no SSN, nada. What a crazy world this has become!

Rosetta Stone Spanish...I'm in like Flint....

Des

reply to post by FissionSurplus


Good! I hope all the insurance companies to get bankrupt! These people are the biggest crooks ever! Health care should never be a matter of business! It is anti-humane to do business with the people's health. All health insurance should be nonprofit organizations and paid by the government from the huge taxes they are collecting from us. There are other ways too to get this done the right way with or without insurance companies. People of USA wake up!!!

reply to post by nedined


That is the sad part I don't think they will go bankrupt except on paper. It's a a big game/scam. It has been apparent to me for sometime that some of the players are cheating only way to win it not to play the game at all.

reply to post by FissionSurplus


As a person who spent many years working in energy including natural gas marketing, I was wondering what is your activity with gas. Energy companies stock, futures or just keeping up with the trends?

reply to post by roadgravel


My husband was day-trading a natural gas ETF and made some good money on it. It is volatile, but he was playing with it when natural gas was at an abnormal low, so the money was pretty good. We have found ETFs to be more of a roller coaster ride, but if you hit them right, the payoff is sweet. Jump in, then jump out.

BOIL (proshares product, XX ETF natural gas futures, bullish), and it's inverse, the bearish KOLD, were what he traded. It is necessary to know which month the futures are predicting, however.

See www.proshares.com.

Caveat emptor: These ETFs are run by banks, and if the banks suddenly have a problem, these ETFs could really drop and you could lose your butt. But if you hit them correctly, you could earn a month's pay in a day or two.

Originally posted by Bone75

Originally posted by TWISTEDWORDS
Stock analysts are predicting that all to most Americans will not pay for the insurance and just pay the small $95 tax penalty.

Actually it starts in 2014 at $95 or 1% of gross income (whichever is greater), and maxes out in 2016 at $695 or 2.5 percent of income.

Keep in mind, this is an INDIVIDUAL mandate.

The penalty will be the greater of a flat dollar amount per person, OR a percentage of your taxable income. For dependents under 18, the penalty is half the individual amount.

The annual penalty is capped at an amount roughly equal to the cost of the national average premium for a qualified health plan — in other words you cannot be forced to pay more than it would have cost to buy a plan in the first place.

Flat dollar amount for individuals: $95 in 2014; $325 in 2015; and $695 in 2016; increases indexed to inflation after that, subject to a cap.

For example, courtesy Blue Cross Blue Shield: An uninsured family of three (two parents and one child under 18), not exempt from the mandate, would have a flat dollar penalty of $1,737 in 2016.

Percentage of individual taxable income: fixed percentage of household income in excess of tax filing threshold – 1% in 2014; 2% in 2015; 2.5% in 2016.

source

Originally posted by FissionSurplus
Folks, I'll put the question out there again:

If Obamacare is bad news for the insurance companies, why would they write legislation to hurt their own industry? Are they anticipating a short-term hit to their stock prices, but a long term gain? Anybody able to prognosticate the future of these stocks?

Anybody?

I would say the future of these stocks looks pretty good, but the sleeping giant in all of this is going to be the pharmaceutical companies. I'm willing to bet we'll see a lot of major "breakthroughs" in preventive medicine over the next year.

Just a hunch

reply to post by Bone75


Thanks, Bone! Some interesting observations from you, put out intelligently and in a concise manner. I had forgotten about the pharmaceuticals, who stand to do very well indeed.

Preventative medicine, in my mind, goes back to natural remedies, which they are trying like heck to try and patent, much to their dismay. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of their so-called cure!

reply to post by FissionSurplus


........yeeaahhhhhh...

So this is something that has been said time and time and time and time again. Obamacare will cause rates to SKYROCKET .. not because everyone has to buy the product, but because of the way that the bill is written forces the health insurance industry into a financial bind with regulation and expense thresholds. And because many regulations go into effect before the penalty for mandatory coverage, the health insurance industry will see large losses.

By 2014 seeing health insurance rates go up 100% is being seen as conservative. The extra irony on top of it all is that health insurance rates are expected to expand many employer plans beyond the "Cadillac" tax built into the system that taxes "expensive" insurance by 2019 (dumbasses didn't add a inflation control to the bill).. not to mention the Insurance Premium Tax we will pay on top of that..

In short.. first the Government will bleed the insurance companies. The insurance companies will then bleed the people. The people will get mad at being bled and eventually be forced out of healthcare all together, which will in turn create both a health and financial crisis among the middle class that will force the Government to enact a Single Payer system with a Government sanctioned health corporation/trust.

reply to post by FissionSurplus


Its going to be a win-win situation for both. What gets me is how so many people are buying into this crap! Some folks actually believe that this plan is going to lower the cost of health care.

Think about it... first millions of people are going to be forced to purchase health insurance... then pharmaceutical companies come out with miracle vaccines and other forms of medicine that prevent a lot of the high dollar claims further down the road.

Then when both the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are making a fortune, they're gonna turn around and pass the savings onto us...

BaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa

reply to post by Rockpuck

In short.. first the Government will bleed the insurance companies. The insurance companies will then bleed the people. The people will get mad at being bled and eventually be forced out of healthcare all together, which will in turn create both a health and financial crisis among the middle class that will force the Government to enact a Single Payer system with a Government sanctioned health corporation/trust.

Good encapsulation of the situation, rockpuck. How I dread that day. Everything the government touches turns to crap, and is never for our benefit in the long run.

reply to post by Bone75


The government saying that the "savings will be passed on to us" is probably the biggest and most offensive lie in this whole pack of nonsense.

My husband and I aren't participating in this anyway. We haven't had health insurance in years, and we use alternative therapies and herbs, which I have been accumulating before the gov't finds a way to implement Codex Alimentarius and says that these herbs and vitamins can only be purchased by prescription.

I think it's just a positive correlation and not truly a cause and effect situation.

Like I said in another thread this is going to backfire in ways no one has dreamed of. I think there will be a domino effect that goes far and wide having effects on things that no one thought possible.

It is almost like it is part of some big master plan to kill off what is left of our economy.

reply to post by fixer1967


I kind of feel the same way. The strange way that it was rammed through the Supreme Court gave me an ominous, bad feeling, like it was part of a bigger plan, in which they give us a few pieces of candy, but end up poisoning us all in the end.

Me no like. BAD medicine!