The National Association of Realtors has 750,000 members, agents who live in dread of Washington doing something really dumb to the housing market. Washington frequently proves its compassion by looting an industry that it has determined to be unfair to consumers. Thus the latest attempt to reform health maintenance organizations. The Senate wisely rejected a plan, pushed by the president and other business-bashers, to allow patients who think they've been harmed by the denial of care to sue health maintenance organizations for punitive damages. Without a lobby to protect them from this political abuse, HMOs could have gone the way of the nuclear power industry, reformed out of existence.
Lobbyists are wicked indeed.