By the numbers: The health care industry's $50 billion of profit came from $636 billion of revenue, equating to a cumulative profit margin of almost 8%. Those are the highest figures of the past four quarters.

• Approximately 63% of the profit total went to drug companies, even though they collected 23% of the revenue — numbers that mirror our past analyses.
• Pfizer had the highest profit total ($4.1 billion) of any publicly traded health care company in the third quarter. Pfizer also said it will go back to its "normal" routine of raising drug prices after a public skirmish with President Trump.
• Of the 19 companies that tallied at least $1 billion of third-quarter profit, 14 were drug companies. The others were either health insurers (UnitedHealth Group and Aetna) or involved in the drug supply chain (Walgreens, CVS Health, Express Scripts).
• The analysis does not include not-for-profit hospital systems, but early returns still show the biggest systems have a lot of money.

Between the lines: The Republican tax law, which slashed the corporate tax rate, also continues to bolster the industry.

• Drug firm AbbVie paid $14 million of income taxes on $2.76 billion of pre-tax earnings in the third quarter — an effective tax rate of just 0.5%. Pfizer's effective tax rate in Q3 was 1.6%.

The big picture: The health care industry arguably has more financial power now than at any point in its history, and a split Congress likely won't change that in the short term — even though patients are fed up with the system.