1305 A ON Prescience

It’s great to make these essays a little bit wry, and a touch sarcastic. One listener even called them snarky. Which to me always sounds like a shark with nasal congestion.
But occasionally I do a commentary that proves prophetic.
Last spring when the health reform bill passed, I went out on a silver lining and predicted that it would be a job creator. I asserted that the net effect of our complicated tax code is to employ 300,000 CPAs. They in turn employ about 5 people a piece, so those complex regulations lead to 1.8 million jobs, give or take a bean counter.
I then extrapolated that with the incredibly huge and complex health reform bill a new specialty would emerge. The CHI. Certified Healthcare Interpreter. Also spelled like the Chinese Chi, meaning good energy.
Talk about a prophet of profits.
A big company on Wall Street apparently agrees with me. They are AON. Since the other three-letter insurance company AIG took a nosedive back in the economic cratering when Goldman Sachs forced them to pay up on credit default swaps, AON is the world’s biggest insurance broker. They are now buying Hewitt Associates for 4.9 billion dollars, “to expand its division advising companies on employee pay and benefits.”
It turns out AON is making the move because Hewitt provides payroll and consulting services for about 3000 corporate clients and is expecting to see business spike because of employer uncertainty over the new health insurance law.
CHIs anyone?
But we still won’t be able to settle the old political dichotomy. Is this coming boon the result of intelligent government planning, or business adapting and figuring out a way to profit from annoying government interference?
I predict we’ll never know.
America, ya gotta love it.