Goldman cuts health views, Quest put on Sell list

NEW YORK (AP) — A group of Goldman Sachs analysts cut their price targets on a number of health care stocks Friday as the market weakens further, and they placed Quest Diagnostics Inc. on a list of stocks most likely to decline.

Shares of Quest, a Madison, N.J.-based medical lab operator, were placed on Goldman's "Conviction Sell List." Analyst Matthew Borsch said the stock is trading at a premium to rival Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings, but Quest is in a weaker financial position and might have trouble reaching its goal of 3 percent revenue growth in this recession.

Borsch cut his price target to $38 per share from $45. The stock has traded between $38.66 and $59.95 over the last year, and last traded at $38 five years ago.

The Goldman analysts pared their price targets for health insurers Amerigroup Corp., Centene Corp., Cigna Corp., Coventry Health Care Inc., HealthSpring Inc., Humana, UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., radiology service companies NightHawk Radiology Holdings Inc. and Virtual Radiologic Corp., and AmSurg Corp., which operates outpatient surgery centers.

Those and other health stocks have been battered by the economic crisis. More recently, investors have been selling the stocks due to concerns that the federal government will cut Medicare reimbursement rates as part of an effort to save money and reform the health care system.