Yahoooo! Healthcare sector of the stock market is the most profitable!

[tpsbmam]

Digging Fat Pharma Dividends... That's part of the title of the Forbes blog piece below, dated July 8, 2011.

So far in 2011, it’s been a fat time for stock investors.

<snip>

In terms of sectors, the S&P Health Care SPDR (XLV) leads the pack with a sector-best 15.2% advance year-to-date through July 7. Not far behind is S&P Energy SPDR (XLE), clocking a 14.4% gain. Consumer discretionary stocks in the XLY rose 12%

<snip>

So how should the sector performance so far this year influence what to buy for the second half? Check out the Market Blaster video below for details, but overall it seems smart to respect the strength in health care and keep holding it or add exposure.

<snip>

The huge pharmaceutical, insurance and medical services stocks that make up the XLV ETF have proven their resilience and ability to grow through any kind of economic or political adversity. Plus the top holdings like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck and Abbot Labs offer lean valuations and meaty dividends.

(The video analyzes investing in healthcare.)




From a 2009 LA Times article titled "Executives at health insurance giants cash in as firms plan fee hikes" (hikes as high as 39%) :

Aetna's net income jumped more than 40% in the second quarter of 2010 compared with a year earlier. Indianapolis-based WellPoint recorded a 51% increase in its profit in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2009.

At the same time, the companies have sought major premium hikes. In Rhode Island, UnitedHealth of Minnetonka, Minn., this spring sought increases of up to 15.5%. In Utah, some customers of Humana of Louisville, Ky., reported increases of 29%.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________








Tracy Pierce, age 37, developed kidney cancer, married father of a young son

When Flink talked to Tracy Pierce, his cancer was attacking his body. Despite being fully insured, every treatment his doctors sought for him was denied by his insurance provider. First-Health Coventry deemed the treatments were either not a medical necessity or experimental.

"I don't know what else to do but just wait," Tracy Pierce said last May.

As he waited, his doctors appealed again and again, including a 27-page appeal spelling out that Tracy Pierce would die without care. Coventry dismissed each request.

"It's purely economical. You never see an insurance company try to block an inexpensive test," said William Soper.

Tracy died -- his family calls it "death by denial" and his wife, Julie, rightly says that he was murdered by their insurance company.



______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Deamonte Driver, 12-years-old, "died because his family could not afford private dental treatment."

He developed a tooth abscess that spread to his brain.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Marcelas Owens, an 11-year-old from Seattle, headlined a press conference with Senate Democratic leadership on Thursday, telling a packed room of reporters that he wanted the president and Congress to come together and pass health insurance reform.

"I am here because of my mom," said Owens. "My mom was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in 2006. She missed so much work she lost her job. And when my mom lost her job, she lost her health care. And losing her health care ended up costing her her life."

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kimberly Young was a previously healthy 2008 graduate of Miami University of Ohio. She was diagnosed with swine flu and pneumonia. However, she was reluctant to seek treatment because she had no insurance. Brent Mowery, her friend and former roommate said:

"That’s the most tragic part about it. If she had insurance, she would have gone to the doctor."

On Sept. 22, Kimberly Young’s condition suddenly worsened, and her roommate drove her to McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford. She was then flown in critical condition to University Hospital in Cincinnati, where she died.

Ironically, Young is a constituent of John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Minority Leader. Last week on "Meet the Press," he dismissing the public option as “big government” while defending a watered-down health reform plan.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Nicki White

Nikki was a slim and athletic college graduate who had health insurance, had worked in health care and knew the system. But she had systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was diagnosed when she was 21 and gradually left her too sick to work. And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance.

In any other rich country, Nikki probably would have been fine, notes T.R. Reid in his important and powerful new book, “The Healing of America.” Some 80 percent of lupus patients in the United States live a normal life span. Under a doctor’s care, lupus should be manageable. Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.

As Reid recounts, Nikki tried everything to get medical care, but no insurance company would accept someone with her pre-existing condition. She spent months painfully writing letters to anyone she thought might be able to help. She fought tenaciously for her life.

Finally, Nikki collapsed at her home in Tennessee and was rushed to a hospital emergency room, which was then required to treat her without payment until her condition stabilized. Since money was no longer an issue, the hospital performed 25 emergency surgeries on Nikki, and she spent six months in critical care.

Nikki was 32 when she died.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


And the millions more who've died, been bankrupted, lost everything due to overwhelming medical bills, have been refused care due to no insurance or insurance company refusals to cover needed care....

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2008 Salary Survey

Ron Williams, Aetna CEO: Total Compensation: $24,300,112
H. Edward Hanway - CIGNA CEO Total Compensation $12,236,740
Angela Braly - WellPoint CEO: Total Compensation: $9,844,212
Dale Wolf - Coventry Health Care CEO: Total Compensation: $9,047,469
Michael Neidorff - Centene CEO: Total Compensation: $8,774,483
James Carlson - AMERIGROUP CEO: Total Compensation: $5,292,546
Michael McCallister - Humana CEO: Total Compensation: $4,764,309
Jay Gellert - Health Net CEO: Total Compensation: $4,425,355
Richard Barasch - Universal American CEO: Total Compensation: $3,503,702

H. Edward Hanway, former CEO of Cigna, retirement package: $110.9 million in 2008.


What a vile country this has become.


:grr: :grr: :grr:

[tpsbmam]

1. Kicking for Tracy, Deamonte, Marcelas, Kimberly, Nicki and all

of the millions who suffer in the US.

Jesus folks, 109 posts and 10 recs on a post about a painting of Diana, Will & Kate. I truly give up on DU sometimes.

[woo me with science]

2. K&R nt

[Ilsa]

3. K&R. We've met our out of pocket on one of my kids already.

It galls me that execs make so much money denying rightful coverage.

If the govt isn't going to offer Medicare for all, then they should regulate health insurance companies as if they were a monopolistic utilit, and limit their compensation and total profitability to provide premium savings to individuals and companies offering group plans.

[Edweird]

4. And Obama's FAR RW individual mandate means it isn't going to end any time soon.

In fact it is only going to get worse.

[tpsbmam]

6. My thoughts exactly

But be reassured, profits will soar, stockholders will be happy and CEO salaries will reflect all of that. We should be dancing with joy -- capitalism works!!

:bounce:


:grr: :grr: :grr:

[kenny blankenship]

5. But the important thing is that our SYSTEM is healthy. The insurance corporations ARE our system.

The LAW says so (since March 25, 2010). And how do you keep the system healthy? With PROFITS of course. Corporations whose shares are traded always need fresh profits, ever larger profits year after year, or their share value declines, and the body of the corporation withers and dies. Finding fresh profits is what the corporation works hardest at, always busy, always thinking of new ways to keep itself strong and healthy and growing.

What this report tells us is that our system is DOING FINE. It is in the very pink of health. A healthy system is a good thing. Attacking a good thing is BAD.

I hope people will STOP ATTACKING our system. The lives and health of 310 million Americans depend on it! Sometimes, individual parts of the system have to be shed so that the system can stay healthy and clean. They die but the system stays strong. And if the whole system becomes unhealthy because its profit levels drop, then we will all surely die horrible deaths. What's worse, we might be dug up and reanimated by evil Socialist Medicine and turned into unfree, Marx-spouting, Communist zombies.

Who is so selfish that they would destroy the lawfully designated system of medicine in this country by verbally attacking it on the very point which keeps it healthy? Who wants to turn his friends and family and neighbors into Communist zombies?