Cultures that haggle<fn> have a rule-of-thumb when making deals that is approximately: "If the customer/shopkeeper is smiling, you got screwed." On the other hand, if you're walking away with purchases under your arm and you can just hear the sound of someone cursing you and your ancestors over the sound of your whistling, then you got a good deal. The title says it all: <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/12/22/health_care/index.html" source="Salon.com" author="Glenn Greenwald">Healthcare industry stocks explode as bill progresses</a>. Wall Street has been doing a frenetic jig, rubbing itself to new heights of ecstasy over the interest-free piles of cash lying on its doorstep every morning. The Street cringed for a bit, waiting for the regulatory shoe to drop...but it never did. Wall Street celebrated the final health-care bill that passed the Senate by pushing health-care industry stocks to 50-year highs. The other guy is grinning from ear-to-ear so hard that he's going to need plastic surgery when this is all over and you're standing there with an empty wallet, no pants and a sinking feeling. Not only are stocks up, in general, but many of America's most illustrious representatives have portfolios simply stuffed with exactly those stocks that are celebrating their craven capitulation to industry over social good. The notion of "conflict of interest" has been relegated to the status of a legal curiosity that can only hypothetically affect a representative who wasn't already rich, a lawyer or retaining an experienced, rich accountant who's also a lawyer. And we don't have any of those, so the notion remains hypothetical. Greenwald cites an example: <bq>[...] according [to] an Indianapolis Star article from June, Evan Bayh's<fn> wife, Susan, "owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits." That would mean that the value of her personal holdings in that one health insurance company alone, in the last six weeks alone (since Lieberman and her husband began menacing the public option), would have increased by a value of between $125,000 and $250,000. As part of the bonanza of health care industry board positions she magically received since her husband became a Senator, Susan Bayh is given a quarter-million dollars each year in stocks and stock options from Wellpoint.</bq> To sum up, once you're elected to the Senate, you can't personally benefit from obvious graft...but your wife can. Whether Bayh believes in what he fought and voted for is almost a side issue: The fact remains that the side for which he fought is paying his wife a quarter of a million dollars per year for what is effectively a sinecure. Not only that, but his family gets what amounts to another quarter of a million windfall from the stock market at a time when many Americans are trying to figure out how to get through the holiday season (not to mention a truly heinous winter in much of the country). These are the same Americans, incidentally, that Mr. Bayh sold out to the health-care industry because of what---in the absence of legal evidence---we are forced to assume was his <i>own, voluntary opinion</i>, but which our gut tells us was because he was bought and paid for, pure and simple. Corruption or craven stupidity, it doesn't matter; it's nauseating to behold. The insurance companies are celebrating because they've got millions of new, mandated customers at the same back-breaking rates as we all enjoy today.<fn> To the argument that private companies are "supposed to" try to make a profit, Greenwald responds <iq>Yes, they're "supposed to" earn profits -- but they're supposed to do so by competing for customers, not by having the federal government enact laws <b>forcing people to purchase their products</b> under penalty of having part of their income seized by the IRS. (emphasis in original)</iq> Anyone who defends the industry side of the argument from a capitalist angle is full of shit from the get-go: This is corporate welfare, pure and simple. Instead of simply making a public option or nationalizing health-care, the U.S. has decided to permanently fund a large private sector with taxpayer money, with no cost caps whatsoever. It's ridiculous and not worth treating as a serious argument. It's also reality, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous. You might not be able to change it, but you damned well don't have to drink the Kool-Aid. The health-care industry paid what amounts to a pittance to lobby (read: steer) legislation to their ends. They even had their flunkies write a good deal of it to keep our representatives from having to work <i>too</i> hard. Hell, most of our representatives don't read the bills they pass anyway; what are the odds that they read this 2500+ page monster when they've already had wads of incentive dangled under their noses to vote the <i>right</i> way? Sure, one concession the health-care industry was forced to accept is that they can no longer <i>officially</i> turn people away for preëxisting conditions, but does anyone seriously believe they won't find a loophole? That they won't just do it anyway because they know the fine will be much lower than the costs? If your counter-party is smiling, you got screwed. With the sound of the Health Care industry's party favors audible from half a continent away, America's going to wake up in an alley with a roofie hangover. <hr> <ft>Knowledge filtered second-hand from a Turkish friend who's been so Americanized that he's only embarrassed by his utter inability to haggle. His Mother, on the other hand, is a force of nature.</ft> <ft>One of the Senators---along with the notorious Lieberman---who exerted undue (and vastly disproportionate) influence on the final shape of the health-care bill, rendering it effectively toothless.</ft> <ft>Remember, rates are over twice as high as a decade ago...and wages and other compensation are lower.</ft>