Say what you will about the Affordable Care Act, it has been a huge boon to hospitals and hospital stocks. The shares have surged this year for a simple reason: More patients have gone to hospitals for care, and thanks to the ACA, more can afford to pay for it. That has helped boost earnings at publicly traded hospital-management companies such as LifePoint Hospitals (ticker: LPNT), HCA Holdings (HCA), and Universal Health Services (UHS), whose shares have returned more than four times the gain in the Standard & Poor's 500. Some observers question whether the stocks already reflect all the good news, but their worries seem premature. [Subscription Required]
