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Friday, July 24, 2009

Insurance Companies and Investment Portfolios

I am surprised that I have not heard much debate about what will happen to the massive investment portfolios of insurance companies under various health care reform proposals.

The concept behind insurance is that people should pool their resources to pay for medical expenses. The result of this paradigm is that insurance companies end up with massive amounts of money to invest.

These investments provide grundles of jobs.

Moving millions of people from private to public insurance necessarily means a massive drop in this investment portfolio. Will it mean a massive drop in jobs provided by the investments?

The market is a very strange thing. Investments don't just disappear. As pooled insurance companies sell off their portfolio, others will end up acquiring the stock. Removing the pooled insurance will decrease the amount of stock owned by pooled entities ... the elimination of pooled insurance is likely to increase the ownership of the uber. It might hasten the flow of capital from American hands to foreign entities.

It is an interesting question: "What will happen when our pooled insurance companies sell off their investments in the new health care regime?"

PS: One of the reasons I like Medical Savings Accounts is such accounts improve the overall investment portfolio of our nation.

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