Reform may hit hospitals harder than insurance

The immediate reaction on Wall Street to last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding President Obama's healthcare law was to buy hospital stocks and dump health insurance stocks. But at least one analyst expects the long-term outcome to be exactly opposite of that. Sheryl Skolnick, co-head of research at CRT Capital Group LLC, thinks hospitals face as much or more financial risk as health insurers under Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "The hospitals may end up paying for the poorest and sickest of today's uninsured anyway AND see cuts in Medicare and Medicaid on top of that," Skolnick wrote in a June 29 note to investors.