Dallas-based AT&T said in a regulatory filing yesterday it would record $1 billion of costs. “As a result of this legislation, including the additional tax burden, AT&T will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health-care benefits offered by the company,”
New York-based Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, told employees in a note shortly after the law was signed that the tax will make a drug subsidy less valuable to employers like Verizon and so “may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.”
Moline, Illinois-based Deere, the world’s largest maker of farm machinery, said on March 25 that the new health-care law would increase its expenses by $150 million this fiscal year.
Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, expects to record a charge of about $100 million in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting new tax liabilities on retiree drug benefits.
Medtronic has just announced that the new Obamacare taxes on its products could force it to lay off 1,000 workers. What do those guys do? Well, they develop products such as the recently approved pacemaker that's safe for MRI scans or the InterStim bladder control device. So that's a thousand fewer people who'll be working on new stuff.
A dire warning from Bay State medical-device companies that a new sales tax in the federal health-care law could force their plants “This bill is a jobs killer,” said Ernie Whiton, chief financial officer of Chelmsford’s Zoll Medical Corp., which employs about 650 people in Massachusetts. Many of those employees work in Zoll’s local manufacturing facility making heart defibrillators.
“We could be forced to (move) manufacturing overseas if we can’t pass along these costs to our customers,” said Whiton.
The cost to companies of the landmark U.S. health-care overhaul continued to mount Wednesday as Boeing Co. said it will take a $150 million charge against first-quarter earnings because of tax changes in the legislation.
Also Wednesday, fellow aerospace company Lockheed Martin Corp. estimated that it will take a $96 million charge because of the health-care legislation and expects the charge to reduce per-share earnings by 25 cents in the first quarter.
The firms became the latest in a string of companies to reveal charges tied to retiree prescription costs since President Obama signed the health bill into law last week.
3M, $90 million;
AK Steel, $31 million;
Valero, $20 million.
General Electric Co., the world’s biggest maker of jet engines, power-plant turbines and locomotives, said today it doesn’t anticipate taking a charge tied to the health-care law.
All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimated a $14 billion haircut for these corporations.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Dems-fear-honest-Obamacare-accounting-89466462.html#ixzz0jkiisES6
No comments:
Post a Comment