Whether or not interest rates rise significantly from here will little affect my attraction to both large-cap drug and medical-supply stocks. As a value investor, both of these industries appeal to me. They offer above-average dividend yields and compelling valuations. I also like the fact that these industries have been unloved for many years. And, most of the stocks I'll highlight today have missed out on the nice rebound off the bear market lows in October 2002. It looks like these two industries are classic turnaround value plays.

I ran a filter of 8,000 stocks using Value Line's Professional 3.0 Software to zero in on quality companies in the drug and medical-supply industries. The following criteria were used to come up with my short list of 11 stocks:

financial strength rating B++ or better
dividend yield at or above the S&P 500's 1.6% yield
safety rank of 3 or lower (a rank of 1 indicates highest safety)
beta of 1.2 or less

The stock screen filtered through several hundred companies in these industries and spit out a beautiful list of 11 candidates, which I rounded down to 10 quality dividend plays -- six in the drug industry and four in medical supplies. Abbott Laboratories (ABT - commentary - Cramer's Take), Baxter International (BAX - commentary - Cramer's Take), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Mentor (MNT - commentary - Cramer's Take) make up the medical supply plays; the rest are drug stocks.