Nancy Pelosi has now said her piece. The most unpopular Speaker of the House in the history of Wall Street has gotten her precious health care legislation through the House after ramming through a stimulus package that had far too little infrastructure and far too much pay raise for municipal and state workers, the most powerful interest group in the country.
But this time the Senate sees through it, and the politicians -- despite Pelosi's insistence that Tuesday's election went her way -- know better. There are pages after pages after pages in this bill that look threatening. But here's the rub: This bill's public option, the one that is supposed to be a killer to everything health care, should affect no more than 6 million people over a 10-year period, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In order to get 60 votes in the Senate, even that may prove to be too powerful an option.
Even better for the bulls, as we go into 2010 we will have seen the high-water mark of what Wall Street views as radicalism in Congress. That means you can see earnings per share increase and multiples expand for Humana (HUM) (Cramer's Take), WellPoint (WLP) (Cramer's Take), Aetna (AET) (Cramer's Take) and Cigna (CI) (Cramer's Take). You can buy Stryker (SYK) (Cramer's Take), which put up good numbers. You can expect that the highest-multiple pharma plays -- Celgene (CELG) (Cramer's Take), Abbott (ABT) (Cramer's Take) and Gilead (GILD) (Cramer's Take) -- can go higher.
You not only can stop fearing the sector, you can go overweight it -- not to mention that with Washington defanged, you can bet that the resistance upward will not be so stiff.
The House has spoken. Pelosi's spoken.
They are done talking.
The silence is golden.
Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long Abbott and Gilead.
Why is gold marching higher? Ask the central bankers
Newspaper ad revenue of 28%, 8 quarters of double-digit drops
Closing Bell: Earnings working against stocks (BCRX, DELL, DHI, INTC, LEAP, PCS)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-09-2009 @ 12:16PM
Beltway Greg said...
"the senate is filled with more savvy politicians and the upside for beaten down names is huge."
And "senate, savvy politicians, and upside" are related?
Thank you for providing me with some jocularity for the day.
11-09-2009 @ 1:30PM
shap0019 said...
I hope your comments on the healthcare bill are as mis-guided as most of your stock picks.