Replies to post #93255 on Biotech Values

[mouton29]

<<If there is no provision to prevent this, than the insurance industy in the US will go bankrupt>

I'm curious how this will work in practice in common fact patterns. If your employee covers you, how do you go about canceling and getting the benefit of the savings? Will your employer allow to cancel and reinstate? If you have a heart attack/stroke or are otherwise incapacitated, how do you go about applying for insurance? Maybe a whole new industry of insurance gaming facilitators will arise, you authorize them to apply on your behalf as rapidly as possible in the event of an emergency.

[medchal]

"...why aren't those stocks getting killed?"  Darned if I could give a definitive answer, but part of it has to be that they've been half dead and coughing up blood for a long time anyway.  It seems that those who rail about the bloated profits of that sector have been strangely remiss in buying stock in these companies to participate in all the windfall profits they postulate.

Travelers (TRV), for example is trading at a P/E of 8.46.  Principal (PFG), which, after decades in the health insurance business (claiming that it was and would always be a core business for them) threw in the towel and abandoned it completely a few years ago, trades at a P/E of 14.86.

[DewDiligence]

If there is no provision to prevent [gaming the system by waiting until one is sick to buy health insurance] then insurance industry in the US will go bankrupt. That has probably been the plan all along.

See #msg-48212730. A single government plan with automatic enrollment as in Medicare Part A would've been a better solution than what we have now, IMO.