Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) is the nation's number one supplier of support products and services for the health care industry. After a lengthy investigation by the New York Attorney General's office regarding the purchase of pharmaceutical products on the secondary pharmaceutical market, Cardinal Health announced December 26, 2006, that a settlement had been reached and that the situation is, for Cardinal, no longer an issue, except as pertains to their ongoing efforts to improve the security of the pharmaceutical products supply chain.

It should be noted that the $81 billion health provider Cardinal was only one participant in an investigation that involves health care players nation wide. Cardinal's stock value has deflated some over the past nine months, and may constitute a nice buy right about now.

The good news is that Cardinal has completed a comprehensive test of RFID technology, one of my pet projects. Cardinal has proven that RFID (radio frequency identification) tags can be applied to product, encoded en route, and then accurately read at normal production speeds during packaging and distribution of pharmaceuticals. The test has shown that RFID can be exploited within existing product flow models utilizing current equipment and materials. Cardinal reports encoding yields of 95% to 97%, and they expect they can fine tune for even higher yields. Yield simply means complete and accurate encoding in one production pass through.

On today's STOP TRADING! segment on CNBC, Jim Cramer went over a trade for a lesser-known name.

He said the big wide bottom in healthcare is here. Wellpoint, Inc. (NYSE:WLP) and Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE:CAH) will win. He said Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN), Humana Inc. (NYSE:HUM) and Celgene Corp. (NASDAQ:CELG) are also too cheap and not done going up.

Cramer then reviewed Zumiez Inc. (NASDAQ:ZUMZ) as sticking with a sell, but he likes Nike, Inc. (NASDAQ:NKE).

He also said techs and oils are going higher.

Jon Ogg is a partner in 24/7 Wall St., LLC; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Whole Foods (WFMI), Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) and Isis Pharmaceuticals (ISIS) top today's list of initiations.

• Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFMI) was reinstated with an Outperform rating, raised from a Sector Perform rating, at RBC Capital Markets. The firm said expectations have been reduced and the risk/reward is favorable.
• Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY) was initiated with a Buy rating and $50 target at Bank of America. The firm is positive on Sanofi's late-stage pipeline beyond Acomplia.
• Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ISIS) was started with a Buy and $14 target at A.G. Edwards. The firm said Isis is at an inflection point and that potential commercial opportunity for the T5000 Biosensor has been "overlooked and undervalued by investors."

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• Citigroup assumed the coverage of Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE:CAH) with a Hold rating and $70 target.
• Bear Stearns initiated Western Union Co. (NYSE:WU) with an Outperform rating and $27 target. Bear Stearns said they are positive on Western Union's powerful brand name and unique global network.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).