Throw Them All Out Page 3
Throughout 2009, Polis was a tireless advocate for Obamacare, declaring that health care reform "could not come at a better time." Polis sat on two House committees that were central to the crafting and passage of the health care bill. As a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, he was involved in shepherding through one of the three pieces of legislation that would become the final bill. And as a member of the powerful Rules Committee, he helped shape the parameters and procedures to secure passage of the bill in the House.
None of this gave him pause when it came to investing in health care companies as he helped determine the fate of Obamacare. While Polis was praising the benefits of health care overhaul, he was buying millions of dollars' worth of a private company called BridgeHealth International.7 BridgeHealth describes itself as a "leading health care strategic consultancy." It works with companies to help them cut health care costs. One of the things that BridgeHealth offers is medical tourism: providing less expensive medical procedures in countries such as China, Mexico, India, Thailand, Costa Rica, and Taiwan. In other words, Polis was betting that there would be more, not less, medical tourism after the passage of health care reform. Companies in the medical tourism industry generally agreed, and favored Obamacare. They did not believe the bill would actually contain costs, and if anything, they expected overseas medical procedures to become more attractive. Medical Tourism magazine featured an article after the passage of the bill entitled, "Medical Tourism Expands as Alternative to Obamacare." As the article put it, "Interest in medical tourism has expanded rapidly as Americans react to the new federal law."8
After the reform bill became law, BridgeHealth boasted that it was uniquely positioned to help companies cut medical costs. "What we can offer to the employer and insurer is health care reform today because we've addressed quality and cost," Vic Lazzaro, BridgeHealth's CEO, said in July 2010 after the bill was passed. "This is an opportunity to convert that Cadillac plan to a Buick because you can reduce that cost."9
In all, Polis put between $7 million and $35 million into the company as the health care bill wended its way through Capitol Hill. When investment timing was crucial, Polis's purchases often coincided with the work of his committees. As the Education and Labor Committee considered health care reform in June and July, he made two large purchases of company stock, worth between $1 million and $5 million, on June 16 and 17. His committee passed the health care bill in mid-July. By October 2009, it was Polis's powerful Rules Committee that was determining which amendments would be considered and what the parameters of the debate would be as the House worked to pass the same legislation that was moving forward in the Senate. On October 13 and 23, Polis made two more purchases of shares worth between $1 million and $5 million. Polis's office, not surprisingly, insists that his investments had no influence on his vote. (It was all a coincidence!) But people do not make multimillion-dollar investments in a vacuum. And Polis was well positioned to know the details of the massive bill as well as what amendments would or wouldn't be considered.
Then there is the matter of his biotech investments. The health care reform bill that emerged from Polis's committees was also enormously beneficial for biotech companies. Embedded in the complex bill were two clauses that were vital for the profitability of these companies. The first was the Therapeutic Discovery Project Credit, which provided a 50% credit for investments in biotech pharmaceutical research. Far more important was the Approval Pathway for Biosimilar Biological Products. The Food and Drug Administration gives traditional branded prescription drugs five years of exclusivity before a generic version of the same medication can be produced. But in this provision, biotech drugs were given a twelve-year exclusivity.
Many observers, like Dr. Jerry Avorn and Dr. Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard University, believed that the twelve-year period was unjustified and that five years was plenty of time. That was the position of the FDA itself.10 The longer window would, of course, be a boon to biotech investors. As biotech analyst Richard Gayle put it after the law passed, "Biotechnology companies now have a known period of market exclusivity post-approval, one that is independent of patent time frames. This will provide investors with the predictability they crave when they project product sales far into the future for biotech drugs in development." In the health care bill, he said, the biotech industry "got exactly what it wanted."11
Congressman Polis favored the discovery credit and longer-exclusivity provisions. And he made three large purchases of an exchange-traded fund when his committees pushed through the bill. He bought between $750,000 and $1.5 million in the PowerShares Dynamic Biotech and Genome ETF just weeks after the committee proposed to extend the exclusivity period. He bought the fund at about $16 per share. After Obamacare passed, the price jumped to $20, a 25% increase in six months.
How much money did Polis make? We will probably never know. Curiously, having made these aggressive transactions throughout 2009, in January 2010 he suddenly converted his assets to a "qualified blind trust." As we will see later, these blind trusts are not really blind, and they don't prevent a politician from providing political intelligence to those who manage the accounts. In Polis's case, the person handling his trust was a longtime friend and large campaign contributor named Solomon Halpern. By creating the blind trust, Polis no longer had to disclose his stock transactions or profits.
Meanwhile, John and Teresa Heinz Kerry continued to trade. Along with Teva, during 2009 the Kerrys also picked up shares in ResMed—at least $200,000 worth. ResMed makes medical devices such as airway aids for sufferers of sleep apnea. The Kerrys managed to snatch up shares in the $20-to-$25 range. After health care reform passed, shares in the company surged to $34, as much as 71% higher than what the Kerrys paid for them. (Two years later, in the spring of 2011, ResMed's stock price had fallen back below $30.) ResMed was a winner in the health care reform legislation—as Reuters declared—thanks in part to John Kerry's efforts. In early versions of the health care bill, device makers like ResMed were to be taxed, starting in 2010, through an "industry fee." In the final bill, fees for medical device makers were delayed until 2013, and the industry tax was replaced by a smaller sales tax (2.3%). Kerry was a strong opponent of higher taxes on medical device makers.
The Kerrys also bought between $250,000 and $500,000 in Thermo Fisher Scientific, which provides products and services to hospitals and medical centers. The firm had a lot at stake with health care reform. The Kerrys bought the stake at around $35 a share. After the reform bill became law, the stock was selling at more than $50 a share—a jump of more than 40%.
While the Kerrys were buying Obamacare winners, they were dumping losers. In the final bill, pharma was a winner, the health insurance industry was a big loser. Not coincidentally, the Kerrys had been selling all their stock in health insurance companies. One such company, United Health, offers Medicare insurance. The legislation dictated lower reimbursements for Medicare procedures. Lifetime coverage limits and protection against preexisting medical conditions were removed—extremely popular aspects of the bill, to be sure, but they squeezed United Health's bottom line. By the end of June 2009, the Kerrys had sold all of their shares in United Health. They also dropped their investment in Wellpoint, another health benefits company. Six weeks later, Kerry introduced an amendment to tax generous health care plans, which would clearly hurt companies like those whose stock he had just sold.12
Kerry's profitable history of congressional trading does not begin and end with the debate over President Obama's bill in 2009. Indeed, some of his most dramatic and amazingly well-timed trades occurred earlier, during other health-care-related high-stakes legislative battles. Some of his biggest scores were tied to his knowledge of obscure matters that had huge ramifications for certain companies.
In May 2007, a government agency called the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services was looking at two drugs that were used to treat anemia in cancer patients. The agency had to decide: Did Johnson & Johnson's Proc
rit and Amgen's Aranesp warrant reimbursement under Medicare? Johnson & Johnson was a large, diversified company with lots of products, so rejection of its drug would not be critical. But for Amgen, losing Medicare reimbursement for Aranesp would be a disaster. The drug was commonly given to elderly cancer patients, many of whom could afford it only under Medicare.
Indeed, when the word went out that the government might end the reimbursements, Amgen shares plunged. But at least one investor avoided those losses with two nearly perfectly timed trades. On May 4, the Kerrys sold between $250,000 and $500,000 in Amgen stock. Three days later, they sold the balance of their stock in the company, another $250,000 to $500,000, when it closed at $63.76 per share. If they had waited two weeks, these sales would have been worth between $50,000 and $100,000 less, because on May 15 it was publicly announced that Medicare would sharply limit reimbursements for treatment with Aranesp. The price dropped to $54.01, or down 15%.13
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Joining Senator Kerry in dumping Amgen shares just in time were two senators who sat on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which did not have direct oversight of Medicare but was involved in health and pharmaceutical policies in general. Senators Johnny Isakson and Sheldon Whitehouse both sold between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of Amgen stock on the same day, May 9, also avoiding large losses.14 Did Senator Kerry know the news was coming? Did Senators Isakson and Whitehouse know anything? We cannot be sure. If they had worked in the private sector, their access and timing would almost certainly have demanded an SEC investigation. Short of sworn testimony, we cannot rule out that they simply guessed right, or were lucky. Even in the private sector, they might not be proven guilty. But the timing seems far too good to be true.
A few years before this narrow pharmaceutical debate, the Kerrys went on a big stock-buying spree involving more than one hundred health care transactions over a period of several months. The end result was capital gains of at least $500,000, and possibly as high as $2 million. It happened in 2003, when Congress was debating what would become the largest overhaul of the Medicare program in its thirty-eight-year history. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act created a new entitlement benefit for prescription drugs. The drug manufacturers were all for it, and why wouldn't they be? Under the bill's provisions the federal government would pay part of the cost of prescription drugs for all 44.8 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries. Health insurance companies were for it too, because the money would flow through them.
The new benefit, called Medicare Part D, subsidized approximately the first $2,500 of a senior citizen's prescription drug costs. En route to final passage, two versions of the bill emerged. One cleared the House on June 27, 2003, and the other passed the Senate on July 7. One called for a cap on drug prices, the other did not. The drug industry stood to gain more with one than the other, but either way, the gain would be huge. Congress went into a joint conference committee on November 21 to iron out differences. It was finally signed by President George W. Bush on December 8, with no caps on drug prices.
Throughout the process, senators and representatives were buying and selling pharmaceutical stocks that would be hurt by or benefit from the legislation. Yet not everyone succumbed to temptation. Perhaps no congressman held more stock in branded pharmaceutical companies than James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who owned between $1 million and $5 million in Merck stock, $500,000 in Abbott Labs, and between $700,000 and $1.2 million in Pfizer stock. To his credit, Sensenbrenner didn't trade stock during the debate.15
By contrast, Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota quietly sold off his shares in the generic drug manufacturer Pharmaceutical Resources (now Par Pharmaceuticals) on September 22 and October 17 as the bill moved toward passage. He sold his holdings when the stock was selling at more than $70 a share. After Bush signed the bill, shares plummeted to $40 within a few months, as generic drug makers lost some competitive advantage to name-brand drug providers. Three days before President Bush signed the Medicare legislation into law, Oberstar also sold his shares in HealthExtras (now Catalyst Health Solutions), a pharmacy insurance management services firm. After Bush signed, the stock lost close to 10% of its value.16
Oberstar had been in Congress since 1975 and knew the ways of Washington. Congressman Jeb Bradley of New Hampshire had just been seated in January 2003, yet he apparently was a quick learner. Bradley owned over $300,000 in pharmaceutical stock when he took office. By October, he'd bought additional shares of Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson before voting in favor of the prescription drug benefit.17 Merck stock jumped 10% in the weeks following President Bush's signing of the law. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson were both up too.
By far the most aggressive congressional trading of pharma stock during this debate was done by Senator John Kerry and his wife. Oversight of the prescription drug plan would fall to Kerry's committee in the Senate, so he was intimately familiar with the law and its ramifications. Kerry was opposed to key portions of the legislation and wanted to allow for the importation of drugs from Canada to keep drug prices down. But when it became apparent that importation of drugs would not pass, the Kerrys became increasingly aggressive in buying up pharma stock. In all, the Kerrys made a stunning 111 transactions of pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies in 2003, according to his financial disclosure statements.18 They were all great picks. He bought shares of drug makers as well as the health plan companies that would actually administer the plan through Medicare. For example, throughout September Kerry made nine purchases of Johnson & Johnson stock, totaling more than $500,000.19
The Kerrys also made sixteen purchases of Pfizer stock, totaling as much as $1 million, while the legislation was being worked on in committee. When he bought the stock it was hovering in the $30 range. After the Medicare drug benefit bill passed, the stock rose to $36 a share—up 20%. On November 13 and 17, 2003, he bought at least $200,000 worth of stock in Oxford Health Plans, which provides coverage for prescription drugs. He also bought between $500,000 and $1 million of stock in United Health Group, which happened to become the largest health insurance provider under Medicare Plan D after the legislation passed. Kerry's financial disclosure statements reveal that the amount he had invested United Health by the end of the year was between $1 million and $5 million. He bought the stock in November at around $28 a share. Months later, it was trading at $33. There were also four purchases of stock in Abbott Labs in the month of November, when it was trading at $44 a share. After Medicare Plan D passed, share prices moved up to $46. The Kerrys also bought Bristol-Myers Squibb, which was trading at around $26 a share. The stock rocketed to more than $39 after the prescription drug benefit became law.
The Kerrys also purchased shares of Cardinal Health, another Medicare Plan D provider (at least $100,000 worth), and made four purchases of Merck stock in November, of at least $240,000.20
In addition to helping drug manufacturers, the Medicare Prescription Drug Act also provided for add-on payments for certain new medical devices. The Kerrys were already invested in two venture funds focused on medical technologies, Salix Ventures II and Delphi. In 2003, they upped their investments in both. The following year they reaped capital gains of between $100,000 and $1 million.
In January 2004, after President Bush signed the law and the stock prices jumped, the Kerrys started selling some of their pharma stocks. The couple netted capital gains of between $100,000 and $1 million with their Oxford Health Plans investment alone. They also netted tens of thousands of dollars in capital gains from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Cardinal Health stocks.
It was an enormously aggressive short-term bet on pharma stock. If you look at the Kerrys' trades in other sectors throughout 2003—transportation, blue chips, and high tech, among others—you find a regular mix of buys and sells. But of the 111 transactions involving health plans and pharma stock, 103 were buys.21
The health care debate in 2009 was a much bigger eve
nt than any of these predecessors. As we have seen, John Kerry was not alone in buying and selling shares as Congress worked to remake the health care system. Some of the most powerful men in the Senate were part of the action. At the center of forging the health care bill was Senator Max Baucus of Montana. Eventually, when the major health care and pharmaceutical companies came out in favor of the bill, it was partly thanks to a series of detailed set-asides that were of immense benefit to the industry. Baucus had a lot of influence on those set-asides because he had been tasked by the White House and by congressional Democrats to put the deal together. And during the legislative process, Senator Baucus, as he was negotiating with pharmaceutical companies and putting his imprint on the legislation, was buying and selling health care stocks. Baucus does not do a lot of stock trading, and he's not a wealthy man. He is no John Kerry. Indeed, he's not even in Kerry's financial universe. But during 2009, as he was shepherding health care legislation in the Senate, fully 20% of Baucus's stock transactions involved health care—related stocks. He bought Gilead Sciences, Abbott Labs, and Fluor Corporation (which is not a health care company but is heavily involved in the sector, building hospitals and medical care centers). All three were perceived winners in the health care debate. And he seemed to do pretty well. He bought Abbott at around $45 a share. After health care reform passed, it soared to $54 a share. All three firms lobbied in favor of the legislation.22