{"id":603291,"date":"2009-10-21T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"090e85a1-1f89-4bea-bf36-4bea664fb864"},"modified":"2009-10-21T10:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T14:23:00","slug":"insurers-stocks-bruised-by-reform-efforts-despite-earnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/603291","title":{"rendered":"Insurers&#8217; Stocks Bruised By Reform Efforts Despite Earnings"},"content":{"rendered":"Despite strong performance on earnings sheets, stocks for companies like UnitedHealth Group have faltered amid uncertainty about the future shape of American health care, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/investor\/content\/oct2009\/pi20091020_838158.htm?chan=investing_investing+index+page_top+stories\">BusinessWeek<\/a> reports. The flagging stocks don't reflect \"the firms' profits, sales, or anything specific to UnitedHealth or its competitors. Rather, it's the health-care reform debate coming out of Washington.\" <br \/><br \/>Despite the recession, revenues for UnitedHealth were up over 7 percent, and the firm's third-quarter earnings of $0.89 per share bested expectations by $0.13. \"Yet UnitedHealth shares are down more than 2% in 2009, even as the broader market is up almost 21% so far this year.\" <br \/><br \/>\"In such an uncertain position, health insurers need to maintain maximum flexibility, says Kunal Pandya, senior analyst at the Aite Group, a consulting firm.\" The companies also recognize that some aspects of reform could lead to windfall earnings, such as a stringent requirement that that Americans buy health insurance (Steverman, 10\/20). <br \/><img src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/khn\/fulltext\/~4\/Tlg24bF2UJg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite strong performance on earnings sheets, stocks for companies like UnitedHealth Group have faltered amid uncertainty about the future shape of American health care, BusinessWeek reports. The flagging stocks don&#8217;t reflect &#8220;the firms&#8217; profits, sales, or anything specific to UnitedHealth or its competitors. Rather, it&#8217;s the health-care reform debate coming out of Washington.&#8221; Despite the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-603291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2wWv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}