Healthcare may not seem like a great investment right now, with all the talk of a government take over of the industry, but sometimes those are just the times that create great contrarian opportunity.

Today, I’m profiling 3 healthcare sector stocks that show promise of growth in the coming years, regardless of the decisions in Washington D.C..

If you’re looking for some growth stocks in the healthcare sector, then these may be just the ones. Just be sure to do your due diligence and homework before you buy. This is presented for general informational purposes only.

First up is a biotech stock, Gilead Sciences.

Gilead Sciences (GILD) has managed to make weather the recession quite well so far, and has managed to maintain much of its profits. It may be due to the fact that GILD specializes in HIV pharmaceuticals, and many of their customers need that medication to survive.

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The company posted 31% profit increase for Q2, 2009. This increase was due mostly to Truvada and Atripla, which are once-a-day HIV treatments. Those two pharmaceuticals alone contributed $3.7 billion in sales last year, which is almost 72% of Gilead Sciences’ total sales.

Gilead has a serious economic moat as well, since they own 71% of the U.S. HIV drug market. They are on track to grow sales even more once Atripla is approved for European markets.

Diversification.
Gilead is taking steps to diversify through acquisitions of other pharma companies. They acquired CV Therapeutics (maker of a chronic angina treatment) and Myogen (maker of Letairis, a hypertension treatment) in the past two years. With these acquisitions alone, Gilead now has a presence in the cardiovascular drug market.

On solid ground.
Even after those acquisitions, Gilead Science still has almost $2.9 billion in cash. It also has a development pipeline and no soon-to-expire patents, something some larger pharma companies are struggling with.

The stock currently trades around 18 times this year’s expected earnings.

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