Verizon and Caterpillar aren’t the only employers warning of rising health-care costs due to ObamaCare:
Deere & Company, Iowa’s largest manufacturing employer, said in a statement this morning that the recently-passed health care legislation will cost the company $150 million after tax this year.The company said the impact would be felt primarily in the second quarter, between April 1 and July 1.
Deere spokesman Ken Golden said the charge would be taken as a one-time cost to cover the new tax the Health Care bill imposes on subsidies paid to corporations for retiree prescription costs under a 2003 Medicare bill.
“The 2003 legislation encouraged companies to stay in the game and continue to fund their retirees’ prescriptions,” Golden said. “Otherwise, the retirees would go onto the Medicare prescription program which would cost the government more money.”
Manufacturers of medical devices are also sending out warnings. (“Medical-device maker Medtronic warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers.”) The Boston Herald explains:
A dire warning from Bay State medical-device companies that a new sales tax in the federal health-care law could force their plants — and thousands of jobs — out of the country has rattled Gov. Deval Patrick, a staunch backer of the law and pal President Obama.
“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 threat — echoed by others in the critical Massachusetts industry — had the governor vowing to intervene to block the sales tax impact. “I am obviously concerned about the medical device burden here on the commonwealth, which has a very robust industry around medical devices,” Patrick said yesterday.
Well, he wasn’t concerned enough to lobby against the bill before it was passed. But this issue and other predictable consequences of ObamaCare will no doubt absorb much of the debate between now and November. Hey, if Deval Patrick thinks it’s a jobs killer, perhaps “Repeal and Reform” isn’t so far-fetched after all.
