From our "Office Pool 2018" column, published December 25, 2017:
The big health care story is a) national alliance of nonprofit or academic hospitals in effort to counter negotiating power of insurance companies b) Distributors AmerisourceBergen and McKesson are each bought by drug companies anxious about Amazon and CVS/Aetna c) surprise bipartisan alliance between Ryan-Trump Republicans and Sanders-Warren Democrats aiming to help balance the federal budget by squeezing drug company profits and physician pay d) unexpected breakdown or hack of electronic medical records system.
From Marketwatch, February 18, 2018:
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. is making a bid to take over AmerisourceBergen Corp. the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday, in a deal that could be worth around $20 billion. Shares of AmerisourceBergen shot up more than 20% after hours. The Journal said Walgreens has made a high-level outreach to the drug distributor, and that talks are in their early stages.
By midafternoon ABC shares were up about 9% for the day. I don't own any directly now and didn't when I wrote the column.
The main point of the journalism here isn't to offer stock tips, and Walgreens Boots isn't really a "drug company," but when we do venture into the predictions business around here, sometimes even being close to being right nonetheless has its satisfactions.