There was some good news out of Washington for a change. The President hosted a high-profile summit on jobs and Congress started work on a Wall Street speculation tax to help pay for a new jobs bill.

Led by Oregon Representative Pete DeFazio and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a group of lawmakers introduced a measure sure to drive Wall Street crazy.

There was a time, in the early 1990s, when health insurance companies devoted more than 95 cents out of every premium dollar to paying doctors and hospitals for taking care of their members. No more.

Since President Bill Clinton's health reform plan died 15 years ago, the health insurance industry has come to be dominated by a handful of insurance companies that answer to Wall Street investors, and they have changed that basic math. Today, insurers only pay about 81 cents of each premium dollar on actual medical care. The rest is consumed by rising profits, grotesque executive salaries, huge administrative expenses, the cost of weeding out people with pre-existing conditions and claims review designed to wear out patients with denials and disapprovals of the care they need the most.

This equation is known as the medical loss ratio (MLR), an aptly named figure that is widely seen by investors as the most important gauge of an insurance company's current and future profitability. In a private health insurance industry that collected $817 billion this year, a 14 percentage point difference in the MLR represents $112 billion a year! Over 10 years, that would be more than enough to pay for health reform.

Last week, Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, came before the Senate Banking Committee for a confirmation hearing.  Bernanke was nominated by President Bush for a four year term beginning in 2006. President Obama chose to continue with Bernanke and re-nominated him this year for another four year term.