Smaller health insurance companies, especially those serving low-income populations, could become more attractive to potential suitors.

These insurers’ newly found appeal is a result of health care reform, passed by Congress and President Barack Obama in March, according to Bloomberg Business Week.

Carlyle Group and GTCR Golder Rauner LLC, two private-equity firms, appear to be looking for acquisition targets, with Carlyle seeing medical insurers as “an attractive investment opportunity,” Karen Bechtel, head of the firm’s health-care team, told Bloomberg.

Much of the appeal is in the growing market assured with health reform. An estimated 16 million people could join government-funded Medicaid programs by 2020, according to the report. Those plans usually are operated by private companies.

In this post-recession economy, few industries can foresee that level of growth in the next decade.

The private-equity firms’ efforts could eventually make it more costly for Coventry Health Care, a Bethesda, Md.-based health insurer that favors growth through acquisition, to buy additional plans, the report said. Coventry, with 4.84 million members in March, is acquiring MHP Inc., an 180,000-member Missouri health plan operated by the Sisters of Mercy Health System. Terms of that deal were not disclosed.