In return for the industry's agreeing to cover people with preëxisting health conditions, and making various other more minor concessions, the government will force more than twenty million new customers into its arms.
The industry enjoys a steady return on sales of some 17%, three times the median return for other industries.
These demands for a return of industry to the US suggest that the height of American industrial production was some kind of dream of a golden age –those wonderful years when Third World peasants labored in mines and fields to produce raw materials that could be sent to the US factories for final manufacturing.
REUTERS Goldman Executive Predicts Higher Returns for the Industry | Harvey M. Schwartz, Goldman Sachs's chief financial officer, said he expected the average return on equity in the banking industry would rise above 12 percent as firms scale back certain businesses, Bloomberg News reports.
Ten-year returns for the industry have dropped to 14 percent, from 36 percent in 2000, according to Cambridge Associates, an investment adviser.
Even with record-breaking annual returns for the industry as a whole, it notched up "significant losses" at its Cambodian operations in the first half of the year.
Generally, liquidity measures and returns for each industry have notable correlation with the market.
The existing agreement had required the government to continue to invest in flood defences – not cut spending – in return for the insurance industry keeping premiums down.
The deal was negotiated by the White House and Senator Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Finance committee, in return for the drug industry's political support for the health care package.
One advertising agency in particular, Publicis, is pushing a ton of advertising dollars through Google in return for what two industry insiders independently refer to as "kickbacks" or "rebates".
