Companies look to Obama for signs on healthcare bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Drugmakers, insurers and other healthcare-related companies will listen to President Barack Obama's annual speech to Congress for signs of life in his Obama's State of the Union speech on Wednesday night (9 p.m. EST/0200 GMT) is expected to largely focus on jobs and the economy as his Democratic party regroups after losing a crucial Senate seat.

Industry experts and company executives hope Obama's speech will offer hints as to whether he wants Democrats in Congress to press ahead, back off or try to work with Republicans on health care reform.

Democratic leaders have pledged to move forward with that reform, but it is unclear how they will do that.

Shares of healthcare companies have fluctuated since Republican Scott Brown won an election last week to replace the late Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.

Brown's election casts a shadow on the fate of healthcare reform legislation, which Kennedy supported.

Before that election, House and Senate Democrats had planned to merge the chambers' bills into one version that could be passed and sent to Obama.

Both the House and Senate bills would impose tough rules on insurers while creating 30 million potential customers with insurance to pay for medicine, doctor visits and other care.

"It's the uncertainty," said Capital Alpha Partners healthcare analyst Kim Monk.

She said investors are uneasy taking positions in healthcare stocks until they know if Democrats will press ahead or pull the plug on reform.

Monk and other analysts said that without clarity from Obama, shares of companies in the sector would likely decline on Thursday.

Shares of insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealth were mixed during the day as investors digested better-than-expected quarterly earnings for WellPoint.

Healthcare reform aside, companies face potential payment reductions from the government's massive Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs, especially as greater emphasis is placed on the economy and national deficit.

"Maybe healthcare falters, but ... there's still a regulatory cycle going on. CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) still has a lot of leeway," Concept Capital's Washington Research Group healthcare analyst John Shepard said.

Consumer advocacy groups, unions and other supporters of health care reform are pressuring lawmakers to keep the legislation alive despite the Republican victory that took away Democrats' 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.

Analysts have said that hospital owners like Tenet Healthcare and drugmakers like Pfizer and Merck & Co stand to gain the most from millions more insured patients and have the most to lose if health care reform dies.

Representatives for various groups, including American Hospital Association and America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), declined to say specifically what they expected from Obama's speech or where reform efforts might be headed.

AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach said his group had not endorsed one approach over another. "We're waiting to see what policymakers ultimately decide," he said.

Source:reuters.com/

Obama Hammers Supreme Court in Speech

President Obama is taking aim at the Supreme Court's recent decision to roll back limits on corporate spending on political campaigns in his State of the Union address this evening, saying the high court "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign companies - to spend without limit in our elections."

"Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities," the president will say, according to excerpts provided by the White House. "They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

According to CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford, "the rebuke of the Court is extraordinary." Many of the justices involved in the 5-4 decision are expected to be in the House chamber to hear Mr. Obama's speech.

The president is expected to focus largely on jobs and the economy as he tries to reframe his presidency in the wake of electoral and legislative setbacks for his party in recent weeks.

The president will "call for the elimination of capital gains taxes on small business investment and push for tax credits for both new hiring and investments in new equipment," as CBS News' Robert Hendin reports. He is also expected to ask for repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for gays in the military.

But in the excerpts released by the White House, he stresses the importance of lawmakers trying to "overcome the numbing weight of our politics" in the wake of a divisive battle over health care reform in order to pass legislation.

"By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance," he plans to say. "Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow. Premiums will go up. Co-pays will go up. Patients will be denied the care they need. Small business owners will continue to drop coverage altogether. I will not walk away from these Americans. And neither should the people in this chamber."

Special Report: Obama's 2010 State of the Union



The president will urge members of Congress to "try common sense" instead of continuing to "fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades."

"To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now," he will say. "We face a deficit of trust - deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years."

The president goes on to say he came to Washington to end that "credibility gap," as well as "the outsized influence of lobbyists." He calls for requirements that lobbyists disclose any contact they have with the administration or Congress on behalf of a client - and for "strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office."

He also calls for earmark reform, telling members of Congress that "you have trimmed some of this spending and embraced some meaningful change. But restoring the public trust demands more."

Shortly after excerpts of the president's speech were released, portions of the Republican response from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell were sent to reporters.

On the health care front, McDonnell plans to say that "most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government."

He will also argue that government shouldn't "pile on more taxation, regulation, and litigation that kill jobs and hurt the middle class."

With both parties seeking to win points with voters for staking out populist positions, McDonnell will say "government closest to the people governs best."

"Top-down one-size fits all decision making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market, nor undermine the proper role of state and local governments in our system of federalism," the recently-elected governor plans to say.

Source:cbsnews.com/