Moral Hazard and Healthcare

I was at a meeting today with Charles Casparino of MSNBC, who just published his book The Sell-Out about the causes of the recent financial collapse. However, as you listen to Casparino tell it, it is a story that has been in the making for the last 30 years.

The arc of the debacle goes from Orange Country to Long-Term Capital Management to today + Lehman Brothers. In each of these instances, the US government bailed out the risk takers, eliminating any concern about consequences.

This is the moral hazard that we are all paying for now. The risk takers had no risk because the US Government was always there to provide a guarantee.
Now we also have the US Government taking on healthcare. Yes, the uninsured need to be helped. The personal consequences for them are obviously huge. The consequences for the healthcare system are equally large as more and more people use the emergency room like the waiting room of their general practitioner.

So what is the moral hazard here? Again the Government is willing to assume all the risk if it goes through with a public option plan. And we all know how that turns out, except we are now playing more directly with money and health.