Big brother takes aim at Big Business

Over the last week many companies have announced significant charges to earnings due to the increased cost of healthcare following the passage of Obamacare. From Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation's top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new national health care reform law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances.

On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees.

Now where does Henry Waxman get the authority to haul CEO’s into Washington to explain business decisions? This is insane! And it is going to put all US companies between a rock and a hard place: disclose to shareholders new expenses as required by the SEC, and risk getting grilled by Democrat congressmen, or DON’T disclose the expected new costs, appease Democrat congressmen, and get run over by shareholder lawsuits (and the SEC) when such costs show up unexpectedly in the earnings reports.

Of all the absolute garbage I have seen the Democrats pull over the last several months in the name of socialized medicine, this last move has truly elevated the war between the private sector and the public sector to unprecedented levels. If the private sector does not wake up, and if voters in the private sector do not wake up, the country is heading for years and years of poor economic activity, entirely consistent with a general socialist attitude towards economic policy.

Will the private sector wake up? I hope so, but I can assure you it is asleep right now. In my ‘real’ job, I analyze companies for a living. I called up two large ones I know quite well, and asked “what is the effect of Obamacare on your bottom line – are you going to restate earnings like so many others?”. Both companies told me it was too early to tell the effect. TOO EARLY?! You mean these companies did not work out the math ahead of time? Did not insist from their congressman the details of how this new law would effect them? Did not lobby for or against the law? One of these companies is one of the largest employers in Massachusetts – and YOU DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA? BECAUSE IT’S TOO EARLY? My god man – IT’S TOO LATE!

So we have two issues here – Congressmen intimidating companies for admitting Obamacare is going to cost them a lot of money, and some companies that failed to do the homework on these costs ahead of time. It almost seems the companies that did not do the homework deserve what they get, however those companies are employing a lot of people. It is not right that employees are going to suffer because management dropped the ball in opposing Obamacare. Wall Street and Silicon Valley were big backers of the Democrats the last go round – elections have consequences, as many in the private sector are now finding out with dismay.

November is looking a long way off right now.

Author: Mark

Remember these names

Here is how the MA delegation voted on Obamacare. As the health care system morphs into the Post Office, remember these votes:

Capuano, Y

Delahunt, Y

Frank, Y

Lynch, N

Markey, Y

McGovern, Y

Neal, Y

Olver, Y

Tierney, Y

Tsongas, Y

Once again it going to be left to the Republicans to clean up the mess.

Frank, Markey, Capuano – it’s time to clean the house! Get involved!

Author: Mark

PS: Stephen Lynch, good for you!

Healthcare: A defining issue for Republicans

Whether Obamacare passes or fails this weekend one thing is certain: healthcare will be THE defining issue of the November elections. Republicans are expected to pick up seats by the score, as the country rebels against government over-reach. In fact our own Scott Brown was elected with the same political backdrop that will exist in the fall. In fact, if Obamacare passes, the political landscape should be even MORE condusive to Republicans.

While this dynamic plays out across the country, and will play out in Massachusetts as well, the Republicans are not nearly as well positioned on the issue here in MA, despite what Scott Brown’s victory might indicate. The problem for Republicans is that Massachusetts has a very similar healthcare structure as Obamacare, it is bankrupting the state, and its enactment was driven by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. A wide variety of MA Republicans have supported the effort, including Scott Brown and Charlie Baker. While such support may have been necessary in a bastion of liberalism that is Massachusetts, it certainly negates the issue for these candidates. Republicans must stand for smaller government ALL THE TIME.

So now we have the very odd dynamic of Independent candidate Tim Cahill moving to the right of Charlie Baker, and claiming RomneyCare is poised to bankrupt the state and is a bad idea. Is that going to resonate with voters in November? Absolutely, particularly if articles such as this keep popping up throughout the summer.

My advice to Charlie Baker is to come out forcefully, NOW, against RomneyCare. If he waits much longer, Tim Cahill will have locked up the issue, and it will be impossible for Charlie to move in that direction without looking like a follower on the issue.

My advice to Mitt Romney is similar – if he is running for President in 2012, he MUST get the RomneyCare albatross off his neck. He must step up and admit a major mistake in policy. By the 2012 election, the reversal of opinion will be old news. And Scott Brown, who voted for RomneyCare, should do likewise before he is up for reelection agains as well.

There is a core set of principles that define Republicans. If Massachusetts Republicans pick and chose those princples on an ‘a la carte’, advocating for governement control of healthcare, for example, they leave themselves open to charges of inconsistency in philosophy. That is what Mitt Romney did, and he may not be able to recover from it. Charlie Baker on the other hand was not in a position to vote on RomneyCare, and can still define his position. He had better chose the path consistent with Republican principles before Tim Cahill leverages the inconsistency into the Governors office.

Author: Mark

Stop the Revolution!

A friend of mine sent me this link. This is a video demonstrating the current state of the art in robotic surgery. The United States leads the world in these types of medical advances, and the application of advanced imaging, robotics and computing are creating a revolution in the medical sciences. Nationalizing healthcare as President Obama and the Democrats are proposing will put limits on how much hospitals and doctors can charge for these new advancements, short circuiting the profit feedback loop, and stopping the revolution in its tracks.

The fundamental problem with our current President, and Democrats in general, is a poor understanding of basic economics – the “invisible hand” that drives profits to those who provide value to society. It really seems criminal that economic nitwits have managed to get into a position to kill the golden goose. Healthcare is just the most visible example, but the all corners of the US economy are under pressure from the redistributionists.

Vote the nitwits out, vote Republican whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Author: Mark