Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

Jim Cramer fills his blog on RealMoney every day with his up-to-the-minute reactions to what's happening in the market and his legendary ahead-of-the-crowd ideas. This week he blogged on:

• HMOs,
• rolling back the clock, and
• the housing bottom.

Click here for information on RealMoney, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.

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You Must Sell the HMOs
Posted at 2:38 p.m. EDT, June 8, 2009

How could it suddenly dawn on holders of Cigna (CI Quote), Aetna (AET Quote), United Health (UNH Quote) and Wellpoint (WLP Quote) that they are PENOs instead of HMOs! That means Public Enemy No. 1, by the Anti-HMO-in-Chief Barack Obama. I have been telling people to sell these stocks endlessly because the president wants their business to be nonprofit, which is difficult if you are a public company.

These companies, not unlike Sallie Mae (SLM Quote) and the Apollo (APOL Quote) / Strayer (STRA Quote) contingent are all in Obama's cross hairs. These are companies that are viewed at best as friction and a tax on the system and at worse, actual taxpayer rip-offs.

In the case of the big HMOs, I think Obama can't figure out what these companies do other than make it so the government pays our more and you get less. Their case, that they do insure people who work at companies and do a good job keeping down costs -- something that I actually believe given how they relentlessly stand in the way of a lot of the diagnostics that cost money -- isn't going to be made by anyone in Washington.

The idea of anyone defending these companies seems pretty daunting. I think that these stocks should be sold and sold now, as the rhetoric will only grow. If you want to see what can happen, take a look at Capital One Financial (COF Quote), which was PENO last month.

You just can't take this pain as a shareholder. Pain does not lead to gain when Obama's against you -- it leads to loss.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.