Who Will Profit Most From Obamacare?

Here is the answer from CNN:

Cigna's 2009 profit was $1.3 billion. Next year, analysts are predicting net income of $2 billion. Aetna posted a profit of $1.3 billion in 2009 and Wall Street is expecting earnings of $2.3 billion next year. UnitedHealth earned $3.8 billion in 2009. The consensus forecast for its 2014 profit? $5.7 billion.

And that's a PR nightmare for the president since the launch of Obamacare has been, to put it mildly, a disaster. Okay. That wasn't mild.

Besides the technical snafus, there has been growing discontent about the fact that many insurers canceled existing health care plans for consumers because those plans did not meet the ACA requirements.

Obama was forced to announce a fix for this problem a week ago that may allow some consumers to extend their current plans for a year. But this is a stopgap measure as opposed to a permanent solution.

So while it may be unfair to label the ACA as an abject failure because of its rocky start, it does seem like there are way too many glitches and unintended consequences that have sprung up as a result of the law.

Consumers may not benefit from Obamacare as much as the president and other Democrats promised three years ago. But the insurance companies are in better shape now than they were in 2010.

That's not "immoral." It's capitalism at work. And that should be applauded. It's just unfortunate that the ACA was billed as something that would reshape the greedy insurance industry and force them to act more on the behalf of customers than investors. That hasn't happened. It probably never will.

Right now, the Big Five insurers have gained more from Obamacare than the average American. And that's something the president probably wasn't counting on when he was trying to score political points in 2010 by attacking the health insurance industry for its profits