From
Investor's Business Daily:
... [T]he reason for all these hosannas is these executives [of big insurers] don't want to do anything that could risk having their merger blocked by Obama's anti-trust regulators. Broussard [Humana's CEO], Laszewski says, is "arguing that the feds don't need to worry about too much market consolidation . . . because the Obama administration is such a fabulous regulator."
In other words, this is a classic example of how businesses get co-opted by big government spending programs and regulations.
Obama is forcing the industry to consolidate, so industry leaders need to play nice while they try to do so. And since a combined Aetna/Humana would get a huge chunk of its revenues from the government — either Medicare, Medicaid or ObamaCare — they're hardly in a position to trash government health care programs.
We warned long ago that once ObamaCare was in place, it would be virtually impossible for lawmakers to remove it, in part because health care businesses would fight against repeal.
"Once ObamaCare succeeds in distorting the health care market," we wrote in this space in August 2013, "businesses forced to adjust their operations to conform to these distortions will quickly become Obama-Care's biggest defenders."
Broussard and Bertolini [Aetna's CEO] are now playing this role.
Hardly a more fitting time for one of my favorite movie images of all time ...
