This is such a small town we live in; and I mean that not just municipally, but metaphorically.

Look, for example, at the health-care industry and the noisy charade we refer to as health-care “reform.”

You have Bart Peterson, the former Democratic mayor of Indianapolis, going to work for Eli Lilly and Co. as a lobbyist against any profit-threatening health-care legislation his party might contemplate.

Then you have him back here selling the local folks on the cost-efficient merits of Lilly’s massive upcoming job cuts, much as he once served as cheerleader for the tax abatements the city gave Lilly in exchange for jobs.

Not that the downsizing isn’t a business necessity; not that the tax incentives were money wasted. Who am I to say? It’s this coziness, though, that attaches to it all. Isn’t it a wee bit . . . cloying?

Not if you ask U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, who employed Peterson as his chief of staff when he was governor. Personal associations, he assures us, have no bearing on his public policy decisions.

With these people, personal is up close.

When he was governor, Bayh’s wife, Susan, was a lawyer for Lilly. After it became clear he was going to be a senator, she started stacking up memberships on the boards of health-care corporations.

Susan Bayh got paid a little over $2 million for her service between 2006 and 2008. Her husband had a good 2008 also, collecting more than $500,000 in campaign donations from the health-care industry.

There are scores of relatives of well-placed national lawmakers who are well-placed in enterprises seeking favors. To a man and woman, they would scoff at the notion of being influenced by anything but the burning desire to serve the commonweal.

Let’s go on. Susan Bayh’s largest reward for her impartial board deliberations came from WellPoint, another Indianapolis-based company that happens to be the nation’s largest for-profit health insurer. WellPoint paid Director Bayh nearly $1 million over two years to exert no influence over Sen. Bayh.

WellPoint, of course, proudly notes that it was among industry folks “at the table” with President Barack Obama early on in the health-care “reform” process.

Disappointing as Obama’s proposals have been to progressives who seek health-care legislation that does not delight Big Insurance and Big Pharma, even greater consternation has greeted the watery compromise put forth by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.

As The Star’s Daniel Lee apprised us last week, one of the writers of Baucus’ bill is Liz Fowler, who formerly worked for . . . No, wait, let me guess. WellPoint!

Ah, these flaming liberal Democrats and their socialist schemes.

What’s nice about family — and I use that term in the broadest sense — is that it transcends party differences. Just recently, for example, the Indiana congressional delegation received a letter from Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, opposing — natch — an enlarged government role in closing the health-care gap. Daniels used to work for Sen. Richard Lugar and used to be a vice president at Lilly, so I’m betting he’ll find an ear. Maybe he and Susan and Bart and Liz will put in a word for you and me, you think?