"When I say if you have your plan and you like it," President Obama explained about the Affordable Care Act during a June 2009 press conference, "what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform." Employers and insurers, unfortunately, are another matter. After all, the share of the nonelderly Americans covered by employer-provided health insurance (now 156 million people) dropped from 69 to 54 percent between 2001 and 2010 even as their premiums doubled and deductibles skyrocketed. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of the 14 million who purchased coverage in the individual market are facing steep premium hikes and even policy cancellations from their insurers even as industry stock prices and earnings are on the rise.

Earlier this week, the New York Times explained the sunny outlook for insurers even in the face of the ACA's "10 essential requirements" for new policies and the 80/20 rule on "medical loss ratios" that some fretted would limit profits:



Because they face new regulations intended to broaden coverage and limit profit-taking, some analysts have been concerned that profits will suffer. But in the run-up to the Affordable Care Act, stock market prices have told a different story. Over the last 12 months, shares of the top five publicly traded health insurance companies -- Aetna, WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Cigna -- have increased by an average of 32 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has risen by just 24 percent.

Recent headlines in the business news tell the tale. In August, MarketWatch reported that earnings for Cigna "rise 33% on increased membership," while the Wall Street Journal noted in July that UnitedHealth "raises outlook as profit rises 7.4%." Last week, Wellpoint profits beat analyst expectation and the company boosted its outlook for the rest of the year. Humana similarly raised its earnings forecast while Aetna announced Tuesday that its third quarter profits jumped by 4 percent. Importantly, this strong performance came even as the growth in U.S. health care spending slowed dramatically in the wake of the recession that began in late 2007.

If this story sounds familiar, it should.

As Bloomberg reported in January 2012, "Insurers Profit From Health Law They Fought Against":