The corporate damage rolls in, and Democrats are shocked!

WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE, 3/27/2010 (Hat tip: Carolyn Webb), The ObamaCare Writedowns - It's been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses. ∴ This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or "political." Read more at WSJ...

UPDATE: WASHINGTON EXAMINER, 3/30/2010 by Byron York: As President Obama claims that the new health care law is just a 'first step'... [...] "Prudential [Financial] joins AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, 3M, Valero Energy, and AK Steel in announcing writedowns due to anticipated higher health care costs. The announcements, made to comply with a Securities and Exchange Commission deadline, have angered Democrats on Capitol Hill, who insist that “independent analyses” say the companies’ costs should be lower, not higher, under the Democratic plan. House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman has ordered the CEO’s of several of the companies to testify before the panel on April 21, as well as produce internal company documents related to health care cost calculations — a move that House Minority Leader John Boehner calls pure intimidation." Read more at the Examiner... Read More......

Rove: The Real Price of the Senate Health Bill

WSJ/OPINION JOURNAL, 12/23/2009 by Karl Rove - Pushing health-care reform through the Senate will hurt Democrats. ∴ By now Majority Leader Harry Reid's explanation for how he is getting his health-care bill through the Senate has pinged its way across the country. "I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said this week. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them." But take these comments two steps further and it becomes clear that how Mr. Reid reached unanimity in his caucus could hurt Democrats more than they realize. Rove attaches names to amounts in this barrel of backroom deals. Read more...

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China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform

REUTERS, 11/16/2009 - Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions. Read more at Reuters... Read More......

Championing the Status Quo

WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2009 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - "The status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government." -- President Obama, June 13

One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......