Ruling on health care roils the markets

Hospital stocks surged but insurance stocks fell.

Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Ruling Causes Big Swings In Health Care Stocks
Health care stocks swung wildly as investors scrambled to figure out how the Supreme Court's ruling on President Obama's health care law would affect companies throughout the medical industry (Hamilton and Tangel, 6/29).

The Fiscal Times:  For Businesses, Court Ruling Provides Clarity … For Now
For now, though, the ruling sent hospital stocks surging but insurance stocks lower as analysts and investors tried to glean what the ruling will mean for those industries. Insurance companies may have been pressured -- UnitedHealth Group rose 0.5 percent, but WellPoint (WLP) lost 5.2 percent, and Aetna (AET) slipped 1.1 percent -- by worries about the costs of the rules and requirements they will now face. The rise of insurance exchanges brought about by the law will increase pressure on companies like UnitedHealth and WellPoint that have relatively large individual insurance businesses, analysts at Moody's Investors Service wrote recently (Rosenberg, 6/29).

Market Watch: How Hospital, Insurer Stocks Fared After Ruling
The sweeping health care law upheld Thursday by the Supreme Court proved to be a boon to hospital stocks and some Medicaid insurers, but commercial insurers faced selling pressure. The decision came as a surprise, as conventional wisdom said the court would strike down the purchase requirement known as the individual mandate. It apparently surprised investors in large, commercial insurers as well, though the selloff tempered as the day wore on (Britt and Lesova, 6/28).

Bloomberg: HCA Gains While Insurers Fall On Health Law Ruling
Hospital companies led by HCA Holdings Inc. (HCA) jumped in New York trading after the Supreme Court upheld a U.S. health care law that may arrest a rising tide of uninsured patients unable to pay their medical bills. Medicaid insurers also rose, paced by Molina Healthcare Inc. (MOH), after the court mostly supported a rule expanding the U.S. health plan for the poor. Commercial carriers such as WellPoint Inc. (WLP) fell in the face of the law's new regulations (Nussbaum, 6/28).

The Associated Press: Hospital Stocks Jump After Health Care Ruling
Hospital stocks rose sharply Thursday after the Supreme Court guaranteed them millions more paying customers by upholding the core of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Some insurance company stocks fell in choppy trading as investors fretted about the costs of rules included in the law (Wagner, 6/28).

Kaiser Health News: Hospital Stocks Soar As Court Upholds Health Act
A decision to strike down the act would have maintained hospitals' responsibility of caring for the uninsured while removing the means for patients to gain coverage, resulting in a severe financial pinch, analysts said. So stocks of for-profit hospital companies soared on Wall Street today even as the overall market fell (Hancock, 6/28).