I always found it ironic that machine-stamped uber-processed sugar-laden carbohydrate chunks with inorganic chemical vitamins added was named "Life." I'm sorry, but that cereal is and always has been pretty much death by the spoonful, like so much of what passes for food in these days when small farmers are hounded into oblivion by the likes of Monsanto, and the entrepreneurial founders of organic food companies find a suitable exit strategy in being bought by multinational corporations whose first order of business is cost-cutting. Hey, Mikey likes it!
What with all of the political celebrating going on around the center left over the supposed Republican Waterloo, I decided to cut to the chase, and see what the impact of the health care reform passage through the House of Representatives was on the stock markets today. Hey, markets like it!
Oh, great. I might as well take nutritional advice from a four-year-old child then.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of Medicaid insurers, hospital companies and even drugmakers rose on Monday as many investors concluded that passage of landmark U.S. healthcare legislation will add millions of new paying patients.
Let's see, supposing that 30 million people are now mandated to pay out $100 per year in mandated insurance...that's, let's see, 3,000 million dollars, um make that $3 billion per year. And we all know that I just chose $100 because it's easy to multiply it by 30. The true costs, I don't even want to know.
The point is, of course Mikey likes it.
"It's obviously been perceived by the market, which is more often right than economists and politicians, but I think the changes have basically been perceived as generally positive," Schaeffer said.
Alrighty then. Good for them! Lord knows, Wall Street could use some good news, right? Um, yeah.
Shares of health insurers -- the prime political target of reformers during the lengthy debate -- built on a rally from the end of last week. Investors were heartened that the uncertainty was cleared from the market and that sector companies avoided a worst-case scenario, such as the creation of a government-run competitor.
Yes, we can all breathe a sigh of relief that everyone who can "afford" it has to buy insurance now, and that there is no competition from the government! That's why we elected them, to protect the profits of insurance companies. Clearly. Whoo hoo!
Pop the champagne, ya'll! And you'll want to down the whole bottle before reading where the article takes us next.
The cost of protecting U.S. health insurers' debt with credit default swaps rose.
Five-year credit default swaps on Aetna Inc rose to 110.5 basis points from 97.5 basis points at Friday's close, while Cigna Corp's credit default swaps rose to 120 basis points from 110 basis points on Friday, according to data from CMA DataVision.
Sorry, my head is still spinning from this one. I mean, I went looking for it, didn't I, so what did I expect?! Well, not this.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it feels like to get fucked, and enjoy it. I don't even know where to start, so I'm just going to end this post here.
Have a nice Life™.