The real cost of ObamaCare

Investor's Business Daily "A War On Reality"

Rep. Henry Waxman vowed to haul CEOs into hearings after they revealed just how much ObamaCare will cost their firms. It's an absurd war on bookkeeping, from a Congress desperate to avoid heat for this fiasco.

Their view:

He has decided to haul the executives into yet another round of star chamber hearings to explain just why two and two make four.

This is an implied threat to companies either to cook their books or face legal or political sanctions for embarrassing Congress by revealing the true impact of its health care bill on the private sector.

It has its place with what Stalin did in Soviet Russia, denouncing farmers as hoarders after setting artificially low prices for crops, and what Hugo Chavez is doing today in Venezuela, dictating prices on raw goods and limiting access to money while penalizing companies for passing on those costs to customers.

If Waxman gets away with this, it will be just as corrosive on the private sector here. It's only happening because companies operating in market conditions dared to embarrass Congress with reality.

  I posted on that earlier today.

See Meg McCartle's (The Atlantic) article, "Henry Waxman's War on Accounting". "there's not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money."

Obviously, Waxman is incensed because this seems to put the lie to the promise that if you like your current plan, nothing will change. But this was never true. Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are basically going to see their generous benefits slashed, retiree drug benefits suddenly cost more and may now be discontinued, and ultimately, more than a few employers will almost certainly find it cheaper to shut down their plans. If Congress didn't want those things to happen, it should have passed a different law.

Instapundit: "I think when they planned for ObamaCare’s costs to come online post-election, they didn’t know enough to realize that accounting rules (and SEC regulations) would require companies to act now."

UPDATE (March 31):  John Fund, "Waxman Convenes the First Death Panel" is  how he describes Waxman throwing around his weight.  "At least one business group isn't backing down. The American Benefits Council, which represents 300 large corporations, called on President Obama and Congress to repeal the new tax yesterday."