Posted on 03/28/2010 4:28:51 AM PDT by tobyhill
Representative Henry Waxman called the chief executive officers of AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co. to provide evidence to support costs the companies plan to book related to the new health-care law.
Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak of Michigan released letters they wrote to the executives, saying their plans to record expenses against earnings as a result of the law contradict other estimates. The lawmakers requested the executives appear at hearing Stupak plans on April 21.
“The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern,” Waxman and Stupak, both Democrats, wrote in the letters yesterday. “They also appear to conflict with independent analyses.”
AT&T, the biggest U.S. phone company, is among employers that have announced plans to book costs related to the health- care law signed this week by President Barack Obama. The 10- year, $940-billion legislation is intended to cover 32 million uninsured Americans and provide benefits such as restricting premiums and ending the practice of denying coverage for pre- existing conditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
I don’t think you’re overreacting. It will very soon be illegal to demur in any way from our Great Leader’s plans. Let me clarify: it won’t actually be illegal, because there won’t actually be any laws providing this. But they won’t need the laws, because they’ll enforce it in other ways, ranging from media shows to tax harrassment to, if they can manage it, trumped up criminal charges on other matters.
So GE doesn't cover any prescription costs of its retirees? That piece of information won't be reported, of course.
No to amortizing the loss. The company carried a liability on its balance sheet representing a projected cost for retiree benefits for a few decades of expense based on having to pay 72% of the losses. They had already hit the income statement with this charge as they built the liability up over financial years as employees retired and the company decided to allow them to remain on the company drug plan. Now the calculations for all those years are off by the 28% the government was paying. They have to take a hit now on the income statement for the entire amount that loss of 28% for a number of years in the future represents based on actuary calculations. The companies will now weight whether they should just dump the retirees off the company drug plan and onto the government (medicare) so medicare pays 100% of the cost. If they did this they could reverse a lot of accrued expense on their books and then watch the Democrats brag how their HCR enabled companies to shave costs WHEN IN FACT their doing so dumped it on medicare!
Bizarro world.
They’d better fly “commercial” to D.C.
Reality really bites, don’t it Nostrils?
HD1200 has an explanation at Post #26.
Oops, sorry - Post #27.
Nostildamas predicts that costs will come down.
They can recycle their talking points on "jobs created or saved". Their base still believes.
That is incorrect. The subsidy will continue. Here is what changed
In 2003, the Medicare Modernization Act added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Some employers already provided prescription drug coverage to their retirees, and Congress worried that they would stop these programs and move all those people onto the government nickel. Congress thus created a subsidy to encourage employers to maintain those benefits. The government pays 28% of the cost of qualifying prescription drug coverage for employer-provided prescription drug coverage for retirees who are at least 65. Nothing in the new health legislation would change that.
Here is what changes.
Let's say AT&T spent 1 million dollars on this prescription plan. 72% or $720,000 came from them. 28% or $280,000 came from the Federal Government, or our tax dollars. AT&T, until now, has been able to take a tax credit on the entire $1 million dollars. Including the $280,000 that the taxpayers gave them. They didn't spend that money. We did. Why should they get a tax rebate on money we gave them? This new law closes that tax loophole and now AT&T and other corporations can only take a tax credit on the money they actually spend.
This is starting to sound like the chocolate ration episode from Orwell’s “1984.”
All we need is Gibbs making the claim “premiums would have increased more if we hadn’t acted” at his daily propaganda release, err... White House press briefing.
BUT they will also now do what GE did a long time ago - dump retirees prescriptions on medicare and so medicare will now pay 100% instead of 28%.
“...medicare and so medicare...” = Tax Payers will pay 100%.
Ummm....... Other than skin pigmentation, what is his “strong suit”. Empty suit is more like it.
IF THE CEO’S JUST STAY CALM and keep qouting the shareholder’s information laws and the numbers....
Well, as Obozo says” GO FOR IT!”
I am sure these CEO’s have been hauled to worse meetings than the likes of Waxman. HA!
I kind of laugh at the 1/6th number.....It will end up being like 25% when the socialist Obama gets done with it.
Why don’t these Dims just get it over with and start an organization like the NKVD? That way, then can just arrest people they don’t like and send them away. They can call it Pelosi’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.
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