It's been a tough 10 years for Corporate America, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the nation's biggest health-care firms

Russ Britt of MarketWatch writes:

Examine all the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and you'll find, on average, they'll end the decade with slightly lower profits. But the health-care companies in the index have been anything but the norm.

Data compiled by MarketWatch show that the 52 health-care companies in the index are about to close out the decade with average profits that nearly tripled.

And that level of money-making seems unlikely to change anytime soon, even if lawmakers pass the legislation that's working its way through Congress. Experts say there just aren't many reform proposals that would take a significant bite out of health-care profits.

That shows that Democratic-led efforts to overhaul the system and tamp down its excessively rising costs are being put off to another time, says Les Funtleyder, health-care analyst for Miller Tabak & Co. and author of "Health-Care Investing."

"The [cost] curve needs to be bent because it's unsustainable," Funtleyder said.

Through the decade, the industry has proven it's not only recession-proof. It's also remarkably lucrative by any measure. Along the way, those riches have turned the sector's stocks into Wall Street darlings, second only to the energy sector for a 10-year run that saw their market value rise nearly four-fold.

Read the whole story here.