When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008 and when he was selling Obamacare to the public in 2010, he made insurance companies the villains. In fact, on the eve of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, every Democratic spokesperson who appeared on TV to support the health reform legislation had one and only one argument to make: We needed Obamacare to protect ordinary people from ruthless, profit mongering insurance companies.

They said almost nothing about insuring the uninsured or controlling costs or making health care delivery more efficient. Instead, every advocate produced at least one example of what they claimed was insurance company abuse—usually from their home state or district.

How things have changed. Today, Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration are desperate to do something you may find surprising: give the insurance companies more than about $2.5 billion in bail out money.