That's the sting in the tail of this Golden Sacks report quoted at HuffPo. To GS, though status quo is best* (bien sur), the Senate Finance Bill is the "base" scenario, a watered down version of it the "bull" scenario_{MR SUBLIMINAL No shit} and the HR 3962 is the "bear" scenario. But remember the baseline on financial reform? That if the banksters aren't threatening to commit suicide, the reforms are too weak? Same here. If GS isn't saying the bills are the end of the world, they're too weak.)

A Goldman Sachs analysis of health care legislation has concluded that, as far as the bottom line for insurance companies is concerned, the best thing to do is nothing. A close second would be passing a watered-down version of the Senate Finance Committee's bill.

Haw.

A study put together by Goldman in mid-October looks at the estimated stock performance of the private insurance industry under four variations of reform legislation. The study focused on the five biggest insurers whose shares are traded on Wall Street: Aetna, UnitedHealth, WellPoint, CIGNA and Humana.

The Senate Finance Committee bill, which Goldman's analysts conclude is the version most likely to survive the legislative process, is described as the "base" scenario. Under that legislation (which did not include a public plan) the earnings per share for the top five insurers would grow an estimated five percent from 2010 through 2019. And yet, the "variance with current valuation" -- essentially, what the value of the stock is on the market -- is projected to drop four percent.

Things are much worse [that is, better for people who need health care], Goldman estimates, for legislation that resembles what was considered and (to a certain extent) passed by the House of Representatives. This is, the firm deems, the "bear case" scenario -- in which earnings per share for the top five insurers would decline an estimated one percent from 2010 through 2019 and the variance with current valuation is projected to be negative 36 percent.

What the firm sees as the best path forward for the private insurance industry's bottom line is, to be blunt, inaction.

The study's authors advise that if no reform is passed, earnings per share would grow an estimated ten percent from 2010 through 2019, and the value of the stock would rise an estimated 59 percent during that time period.

And now, here's the sting:

ubetchaiam

For those who argued we should just pass SOMETHING, even if it was a bad bill, because they said we could fix it later, this is what you
get from a strategy of perpetual compromise, a bill that is utterly
beyond redemption. It’s time to throw HR 3962 in the medical waste
bin, and do what should have been done in the first place, build a
new national health care system on what actually DOES work, by
extending the existing economical and efficient Medicare plan to all
ages.

Kip Sullivan at Firedoglake:

They came, they sat, they chanted:

8 Protesters backing a universal health care system briefly occupied Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning.

Protesters were arrested, one by one, and dragged out of his office amid chants of "Everyone in and noone out, universal healthcare now!" and "Represent Connecticut, not AETNA!"

Activists hopefully moving the Overton Window - in our case leftward - because too many Democratic party politicians were too stupid to do that on their own at the start of the healthcare debate.

[I'm leaving this sticky because a synonym for "economic rent" would be really nice to have and propagate. -- lambert]

Go read Numerian for a lucid explation of how GS is making its money. I'll wait.

Now, I want to pull out two paragraphs:

We’ve seen this year the scandal over High Frequency Trading, where Goldman and other firms have computers positioned at the New York Stock Exchange getting information on trades a millisecond before they are posted publicly. Goldman sees where the market is going second by second, positions itself for very short term profits, and in effect extracts a tax on trading by individual investors and mutual funds.

This tax is, exactly, a "rent," a concept which -- lambert blushes modestly -- we were hammering on rather early on, and which our tribunes of the people on the A list still haven't latched on to.

The second paragraph:

The Times:

[I]n Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning a different sort of health-care protest took place, led by left-leaning groups who accused insurers of greed ...

Why, the idea!

... and called for nationwide, single-payer health insurance.

The police said that 17 people were arrested after refusing to leave the lobby of an office building on Park Avenue where the insurance company Aetna has offices. They were charged with criminal trespass. In addition, the police said, three of those arrested were charged with obstructing governmental administration.