The Next Bailout: Healthcare

Business is discovering that bailouts can be fun and profitable … unless, that is, you are a taxpayer or are counting on the dollar to have any credibility remaining as a store of value.

That’s good news for Barack Obama, who can now count on various businesses and their lobbyists to line up behind his ambitious agenda to remake America in FDR’s image (certainly not Lincoln’s). The latest to belly up to the trough, nosing in next to the financial and auto sectors: the health insurance moguls.

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, both America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, and the”prescription drug lobby” are ready to buy into Obama’s plan requiring universal coverage, stating, “Business groups want to reduce the cost and improve the quality of care.”

Like that’s gonna happen.

Lower costs? In a USA Today op-ed today, my pal, former colleague and cogent analyst of just about every subject, John Merline, puts his dazzling and daunting reportorial skills to work to burst the bubble surrounding Prezelect O’s promise of an average savings of $2500 on health insurance.

The stat, it seems, was pulled out of the air based on inflated estimates of savings from increased use of information technology, reduced paperwork (yeah … a government program is going to produce that) and better disease management and coordination of care. And any savings would almost certainly be offset by the cost of covering more Americans.

But hey, who cares? Whatever the ultimate costs of O’s plan — the Journal story estimates $100 billion annually — insurers and major employers recognize that they will save beaucoup bucks by dumping their exploding costs onto the taxpayer. After all, companies have been doing it with pension plans for years.

And amid the more than $1 trillion being devoted to the financial bailout and Fannie/Freddie cleanup and the probable second tranche of an auto industry bailout whose first helping was a cool $25 billion, who’s going to notice a loose $100 billion a year jangling around the Treasury?

Higher quality? Ask them about that in Britain … or Canada.

You can expect more of this enlightenment about the benefits of government involvement — formerly known as corporate welfare — to spread throughout industry.

Want greener energy? Hey, the oil and gas industry is in reverse sticker shock, having seen the prices of its products drop faster than W’s approval ratings. Why not a few favors to them in exchange for reformulated fuels and investments in alternative fuel boondoggles … oops, initiatives?

Barry O and his team are into net neutrality? Sure, if you’re willing to grease the skids with some subsidies for rural broadband penetration or other pet projects.

So what’s the problem?

Well, besides the fact that someday, the bill is going to come due for this Miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue, the opportunity for abuse is gi-normous. $250 million for a Bridge to Nowhere? Chump change compared to $700 billion being handed out, no longer to buy up and provide a floor for troubled assets, but rather to pay bank executives’ bonuses and allow them to swallow smaller rivals.

Earmarks for parks, bike trails, federal buildings and research projects? Mere blips on the radar compared to the bottomless money pit into which the government is about to fall when it starts running auto companies and telling them what kind of cars to turn out.

Wasteful defense spending? Ha. Just wait until rich Uncle Sam completes his no-longer-hostile takeover of the $2.3 trillion-a-year healthcare biz.

In fact, wait till all that money is sloshing around the halls of power on the Potomac to be doled out favored industries … which these days looks like just about every industry other than being a taxpayer (if there will be any of those left after Sleek Barry implements his 95 percent solution).

Gucci Gulch is about to widen into the Grand Government Goodie Canyon.

Where are those lobbyist registration forms?

UPDATE: So right on cue, Michelle Malkin reports on a Pennsylvania state bailout of Boscov’s (where I once bought a Phillies hat for a dollar. Where the heck is it now?). Heck, I completely forgot about retail in my laundry list …