Tag Archives: Medicare

News

More companies announce massive losses as a result of Obamacare

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From Associated Press. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

Excerpt:

Insurer Prudential Financial Inc. said Monday that it will take a $100 million charge in the first quarter in relation to the recent health care overhaul legislation.

The life insurance and annuities provider said in a regulatory filing that it will take the charge against earnings in the first quarter.

Prudential joins a growing list of companies that have said they will take accounting charges because of the health care bills. AT&T said last week it would take a $1 billion charge in the first quarter. AK Steel Corp., 3M Co., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy have also said they would take smaller charges.

Prudential said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the health bill signed into law by President Barack Obama last week and a companion measure he is expected to sign Tuesday will reduce its tax deduction for retiree health care costs beginning in 2013.

Companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been getting subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs but could deduct everything they spent on the benefits — including the federal money — from their taxable income.

Normally I oppose subsidies, but this one one was keeping the elderly off the even more wasteful Medicare prescription drug plan. (I hate that plan – it was a huge mistake made by an otherwise good president). These companies are going to dump the pensioners onto Medicare and it will cost EVEN MORE to have an inefficient government run the program, with all the waste and fraud that plagues Medicare now.

Ace writes:

That subsidy was to induce companies to keep retirees on their own corporate plans rather than dump them into taxpayer-funded Medicare. Now that they’ve cut the subsidy, not only is it costing these businesses money, but many are thinking of giving up the subsidy and dumping them into government health care.

Remember, if you like your insurance, you get to keep your insurance.

And Henry Waxman is going to drag these CEOs in front of his committee, to harass and threaten them, and badger them into answering why they’re bound to accurately account for additional new tax costs.

In fact, Waxman doesn’t want an answer to that; what he wants is for companies to hide these new, embarrassing costs illegally, so that Democrats don’t have to answer questions about them. And he figures harassment and the threat of punitive legislative action should be enough to give other companies the hint.

Preemptive Strike? Rich Lowry says it’s part of the Democrats’ plan to claim that all negative consequences of this bill are due to a conspiracy between evil corporations.

Meanwhile, National Review has a related story from PRNewswire. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE: ITW) today announced that as a result of certain provisions in the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care program, future Medicare prescription drug subsidies received by the Company for retiree prescription drug coverage will now be taxable.  As a result, the Company expects to record a discrete tax adjustment of $22 million, or 4 cents of diluted income per share from continuing operations, in its 2010 first quarter results to reflect this change in tax treatment.  This discrete tax adjustment was not included in the Company’s March 15, 2010 revised earnings forecast.

Wow. We’re in freaking North Korea now. Next time, don’t vote for the radical socialist. Socialism makes jobs go away. This is not a surprise to anyone on the right. We know these things because we’re grown ups. We know how the world works. Happy talk doesn’t grow the economy.

Related: Other companies take massive losses after Obamacare passes.

News

MUST-READ: 20 reasons why the health care reform bill is a disaster

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Here are TWENTY reasons from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

1. You are young and don’t want health insurance? You are starting up a small business and need to minimize expenses, and one way to do that is to forego health insurance? Tough. You have to pay $750 annually for the “privilege.” (Section 1501)

2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You’ll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That’s because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person’s health status. (Section 2701).

5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn’t allow your employees’ slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You’re a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You’re a woman who can’t have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You’re a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

9. If you are a large employer (defined as at least 50 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes). Think you know how to better spend that money? Tough. (Section 1513).

11. If you are a physician and you don’t want the government looking over your shoulder? Tough. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to use your claims data to issue you reports that measure the resources you use, provide information on the quality of care you provide, and compare the resources you use to those used by other physicians. Of course, this will all be just for informational purposes. It’s not like the government will ever use it to intervene in your practice and patients’ care. Of course not. (Section 3003 (i))

12. If you are a physician and you want to own your own hospital, you must be an owner and have a “Medicare provider agreement” by Feb. 1, 2010. (Dec. 31, 2010 in the reconciliation changes.) If you didn’t have those by then, you are out of luck. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A)).

13. If you are a physician owner and you want to expand your hospital? Well, you can’t (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B). Unless, it is located in a country where, over the last five years, population growth has been 150% of what it has been in the state (Section 6601 (i) (3) ( E)). And then you cannot increase your capacity by more than 200% (Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. You are a health insurer and you want to raise premiums to meet costs? Well, if that increase is deemed “unreasonable” by the Secretary of Health and Human Services it will be subject to review and can be denied. (Section 1003)

15. The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry… Think you, as a pharmaceutical executive, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 9008 (b)).

16. The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers… Think you, as a medical device maker, know how to better use that money, say for research and development? Tough. (Section 1405).

So… individuals will have less money in their pockets, small businesses will lay off employees… the number of doctors and hospitals will decrease… there will be fewer new medications and new medical devices developed… and insurance companies will go out of business so that consumers of health care will have fewer choices and pay higher prices.

Every time Obama attacks service providers and product manufacturers, then we get LESS of what they provide. When we get FEWER services and products, then that means that there will be LESS SUPPLY. When demand stays the same and supply goes down, then PRICES INCREASE. We are all going to have to pay for Obama’s economic ignorance. Eventually, the government ends up by closing hospitals and cutting service, as is being proposed right now in the UK. (20 billion euros worth of cuts!)

We could have had real health care reform to make buying health care like buying from Amazon.com. But no. We wanted to buy health care from the DMV, because the service there is SO MUCH BETTER.

News

How are big companies responding to Obamacare?

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Caterpillar and John Deere. (H/T Hot Air via ECM)

Excerpt:

Caterpillar Inc. said Wednesday it will take a $100 million charge to earnings this quarter to reflect additional taxes stemming from newly enacted U.S. health-care legislation.

[…]The charge is expected to be a one-time cost, but Caterpillar has argued that higher taxes and other potential cost increases related to insurance coverage mandates in the legislation will hinder the company’s recovery this year after a 75% plunge in income during 2009.

“From our point of view, a tax increase like this cannot come at a worse time,” said Jim Dugan, a Caterpillar spokesman.

[…]Farm equipment maker Deere expects after-tax expenses to rise by $150 million this year as a result of the health care reform law President Barack Obama signed this week.

Most of the higher expense will come in Deere’s second quarter, the company said on Thursday. The expense was not included in the company’s earlier 2010 forecast, which called for net income of about $1.3 billion.

The law could raise expenses for large U.S. employers. Industrial companies, which typically have large numbers of retirees, may be among those facing the biggest bill. Caterpillar had argued before the legislation passed that health reform would put it at a disadvantage against global competitors.

And National Review reports on Verizon. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Yesterday I posted a memo that Verizon sent to its employees concerning its view that the Democrats’ health-care bill would probably cause its costs to go up. Specifically, the memo keyed in on a change in the tax treatment of the Medicare Part D retiree drug subsidy. This is a subsidy that the government pays to employers that offer prescription-drug coverage to their retirees; it was created as part of the Medicare prescription-drug entitlement to encourage employers not to dump their retirees into the public system. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board reports today, the subsidy costs taxpayers $665 per person, “while the same Medicare coverage would cost $1,209.”

As part of their effort to keep their health-care bill deficit-neutral, the Democrats changed the law and exposed the subsidy to the 35 percent corporate income tax rate, adding $5.4 billion in revenue to the bill. In its memo to employees, Verizon warned that this tax change would make the subsidy “less valuable to employers, like Verizon, and as a result, may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.” This is a clear sign that Verizon and other employers will probably drop their retiree prescription-drug coverage, leaving Medicare Part D to pick up the slack.

UPDATE: More from National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

AK Steele Holding Corp., “the third largest U.S. steelmaker by sales, said it will record a non-cash charge of about $31 million resulting from the health-care overhaul signed into law by President Barack Obama. The charge will be recorded in the first quarter of 2010.”

Valero Energy “will take a $15 million to $20 million charge to second-quarter earnings for the same reason.”

Medical-device maker Medtronic “warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers.”

And more from National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Wow: “U.S. companies employed 3.9 million fewer workers in January 2010 than they did one year earlier.”

If you will recall, when touting the stimulus, President Obama and his team declared that “a package in the range that the President-Elect has discussed is expected to create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 . . . More than 90 percent of the jobs created are likely to be in the private sector.”

90 percent of three million jobs would be 2.7 million jobs. Yet we’re 3.9 million lower than when we started.

To meet the goal by the deadline, the country would have to create 6.6 million jobs in the next nine months. or more than 733,000 jobs per month for three quarters of the year.

UPDATE 2: Now Business Week reports that AT&T is screwed.

Excerpt:

AT&T Inc. will book $1 billion in first-quarter costs related to the health-care law signed this week by President Barack Obama, the most of any U.S. company so far.

A change in the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies triggered the non-cash expense, and the company will consider changes to the benefits it offers current and retired workers, Dallas-based AT&T said today in a regulatory filing.

Hey! Do you know what causes outsourcing of jobs? DEMOCRATS. Democrats cause jobs to be shipped overseas. Democrats hate companies. Companies hire people. Democrats cause American manufacturing jobs to be shipped overseas. Democrats cause unemployment. That’s why the unemployment rate is double what it was under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Democrats cause unemployment.

How do jobs get created, anyway?

Do you know what really works to create jobs?

I mean – do you know what actually has worked in the past to create jobs?

The Heritage Foundation reports:

President Ronald Reagan’s record includes sweeping economic reforms and deep across-the-board tax cuts, market deregulation, and sound monetary policies to contain inflation. His policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs.

See:

That’s what actually worked.

Free. Market. Capitalism. Works.