I liked this episode even though I have no idea what the hell was going on with the money.
Here’s what I got. Patient writes check to House to fund department. Foreman tears up check. House borrows some money from former prison doc, which he loses or something. Patient signs his business away to China which somehow means House has another check which he presents to Foreman, who accepts it. Then House gives a check to Wilson just to confuse me some more. House steals a machine then brings it back, all seemingly for no other reason than House being House. Was anybody able to make any more sense of this than me?
Yeah, the money thing confused me, too, especially when you threw in the machine.
I think he borrowed money from everyone, bought a bunch of the company’s stock while it was taking a nose-dive, and the sold it after the guy got better and went ahead with the China deal ( and the stock went back up). I just don’t know how that machine figured in.
Okay, House needed 200K to buy out Ortho surgery and get Chase and Taub back. As Simster said, that’s why he stole the machine, it was insurance. Not sure what he would do with it, presumably, maybe there’s some sort of black market where people will pay full price for medical equipment. Moving on…
POTW would have lost a lot of credibility if the people in China found out he had a mental problem. House blackmailed him for 200K (presumably) to keep him out of a mental institute. If he was put in a mental institute, sooner or later it would come up and his business would be bankrupt. Foreman didn’t accept the money,
After that, it was mostly borrowing money and some insider trading. He gave Wilson a check for the money he ‘borrowed’ from him without telling him. He mentioned to jail doc that he took it. What I’m not clear on is why he gave Foreman more then the 200K he needed. Some sort of goodwill gesture? House’s version of an apology? Oh, wait, nevermind, it was to pay for all the stuff he let jail doc smash. I was wondering why he let her do that. Got it.
If it stayed here it would have gone bankrupt and house bought stock in the company knowing that it would do well in China (after he heard that it dropped a few points when the shareholders found out he was sick). Basically, he was doing some insider trading.
Or, to look at it another way, if it stayed here, it would have closed and he would have lost everyone’s money.
Also, he wasn’t signing it away to China. He was moving it to China. He would still own it, but he was laying off all the American workers, moving to China and hiring cheaper labor. Not that it’s really important since he was just the POTW.
Not insider training – he wasn’t a company insider, and didn’t have any information that wasn’t known to the general public (which knew the CEO was in the hospital). He merely was confident he could cure the CEO and bought stock accordingly. But it was public knowledge that the CEO was in the hospital and anyone could trade a stock anticipating he was going to get better (or worse, for that matter).
The finances were simple: the first time around, House didn’t have the money to buy enough stock, so he bought options. The options expired and he lost his money (why he didn’t buy options with a later strike date is a mystery; he could have made about as much and have more time to cure the patient). Then he raised more money – by selling the equipment (or maybe taking out a loan, using it as collateral). When the stock rose, he made enough to buy the equipment back (or pay off the loan) and give a big check to Foreman. He also made enough to pay Wilson back for the money he took from him.
It’s unlikely (how’d he get $5k from Wilson, and how could he get full value for the equipment? And it would be unlikely the stock would go up that much just because the CEO was out of the hospital – what if there were a relapse?), but possible.
I kind of figured it wasn’t actually insider trading, but I don’t know enough about it to say one way or the other. It just seemed like if it was, his name is way to closely associated with POTW’s for that to be a smart move.
I would assume he just forged one of Wilson’s checks, put it on a credit card or it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if Wilson had a joint checking account with House’s name on it that he hasn’t changed yet.
While he may or may not have paid wilson the 5k back - the money he gave wilson in that scene was the $100 bet over Park’s dismissal - “Taking money from you is more fun than taking money from her” - or something very similar.
Are we going to get an explanation on where they where or how they manage to job hop like so quickly? Although I suppose when Taub is on House’s team he was usually still running his private practice as well.
I think there’s an argument to be made here; but I’m not well versed enough to finance to make it. Insider trading is the trading of a corporation’s stock or other securities by individuals with potential access to **non-public information **about the company.
Medical Information is certainly not public knowledge thanks to HIPAA. Also House was financially involved with a patient which seems wrong; not only from finance ethics; but also medical ethics.
Doesn’t matter. All House knew was that the patient was sick. That’s public information (it was mentioned that the stock price dropped because of it). House didn’t know the cause of the sickness until after he had bought the stock. He bought the stock knowing what anyone else did: the patient was seriously sick. He had confidence that he could cure him, but since he didn’t even have a correct diagnosis when he bought the stock, he didn’t know anything more than anyone else.
It might be a breach if House said: “The patient just died; sell my stock now.” But even then, House is not legally an “insider” nor is he a relative of one.
As for medical/financial ethics – there’s a good chance your doctor refers you to an MRI facility where he holds a financial interest. Doctors aren’t even required to tell their patients that. If there is no restrictions on a clear conflict of interest like that, you can bet there are no restrictions on buying and selling stock in a patient’s company.
I’d say it would only be medically ethically questionable IF House stood to make money if the patient died - betting on his survival/cure seems like a somewhat appropriate thing to do.
Apparently, all he really needed was for the market to believe the patient was cured, and for him to be well enough to sign the China document. All of that could have been done with a temporary treatment, that had no long term curative value.
While House knew the patient was sick, he also deliberately suggested tests for diseases he knew were incorrect, while setting up his trading scheme. That would not be a fun conversation in front of a jury, at least not after the original blackmail scheme.
Getting back to the medical, there was one mistake that was pretty pointless, since it was just a throwaway. Dr. Park and Adams both tell House they have hepatitis C as a way of keeping him from eating their sandwiches. But Hep C is only spread via blood-to-blood contact and not from eating anything with the virus on it.