Market Reaction to Health Care Law: An Event Study

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s health care reform (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), and other reform-related events, on the stocks of impacted firms. More specifically, we use an event study methodology to compute cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs) for health insurance companies, hospitals, brand-name drug makers, and generic drug makers. Overall, we find that the law has a negative effect on health insurance companies, and on generic drug makers. On the other hand, it has a positive effect on hospitals and on brand-name drug makers.