In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don't like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.

On top of AT&T's $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million. Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.

As Joe Biden might put it, this is a big, er, deal for shareholders and the economy. The consulting firm Towers Watson estimates that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion, unless corporations cut retiree drug benefits when their labor contracts let them.

Meanwhile, John DiStaso of the New Hampshire Union Leader reported this week that ObamaCare could cost the Granite State's major ski resorts as much as $1 million in fines, because they hire large numbers of seasonal workers without offering health benefits. "The choices are pretty clear, either increase prices or cut costs, which could mean hiring fewer workers next winter," he wrote.

The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don't make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.

Powerhouse student loan provider Sallie Mae says layoffs are imminent as a result of President Obama's new student loan overhaul.

"This legislation will force Sallie Mae to reduce our 8,600-person workforce by 2,500," Conwey Casillas, Vice President of Sallie Mae Public Affairs, said in a statement to Fox News."

"By http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=kim.dixon& - Kim Dixon

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service could tap individual tax returns to collect fines against people who fail to buy health insurance as required under recently enacted healthcare legislation, the U.S. tax commissioner said on Monday.

Most individuals are required to get health insurance under the new law, or face penalties that would be phased in over time. By 2016, people without coverage could see fines of 2 percent of their income.

Subsidies would help poorer people buy coverage (spread that wealth around...), and states would set up exchanges to allow individuals and small groups shop for insurance.

People who do not comply would be levied penalties, and if they don't pay them the penalties could be taken out of their tax refunds."

Eli Lilly shares fell 99 cents, or -2.7%, in premarket trading Monday."

http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/14/arizona-doctor-says-obamacare-will-force-him-to-close-shop/print - Arizona dermatologist Joseph M. Scherzer M.D. reports in the Daily Caller that he plans to do just that.  He cites the impossibility of complying with Medicare’s bureaucratic guidelines and paperwork. The fine for failure to comply used to be $10,000. Under Obamacare, it’s now $50,000.

With penalties increased five-fold, doctors will feel even greater pressure to follow government treatment guidelines—even when they suspect the government-prescribed treatment may not be best for an individual patient.  It’s a not uncommon dilemma, as reported by, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/health-care-who-knows-best - Jerome Groopman, M.D., in The New York Review of Books :

Medicare specified that it was a ‘best practice’ to tightly control blood sugar levels in critically ill patients in intensive care. That measure of quality was not only shown to be wrong but resulted in a higher likelihood of death when compared to measures allowing a more flexible treatment and higher blood sugar. Similarly, government officials directed that normal blood sugar levels should be maintained in ambulatory diabetics with cardiovascular disease. Studies in Canada and the United States showed that this ‘best practice’ was misconceived. There were more deaths when doctors obeyed this rule than when patients received what the government had designated as subpar treatment (in which sugar levels were allowed to vary).

Under Obamacare, this sort of bureaucratic intervention is no longer limited to Medicare.  The new law creates an Institute for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will define best practices using population-based research.  This will be used to create government-approved standards for the practice of medicine—deviant physicians will pay a penalty for failure to comply.

Obamacare is on track to cause a ../2010/04/09/side-effects-doctor-participation-may-vary - major doctor shortage .  Putting government officials between doctors and patients is sure to encourage even more doctors to quit their practice.  In Dr. Scherzer’s own words, “They’re providing disincentives to care that are making the practice of medicine repugnant.”"

"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36726295/from/RSS/#">health care overhaul law will increase the nation's health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation.

A report by economic experts at the http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36726295/from/RSS/#">Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls.

Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “From a financial standpoint, from a purely economic standpoint, many companies would be better off discontinuing health care as a fringe benefit, paying the penalty and pocketing the savings.”

A tabulation by the United States Chamber of Commerce shows that at least 40 companies have taken charges against earnings that total $3.4 billion since the law was signed.

“Companies like AT&T, Verizon and a range of stakeholder associations are hopeful that the benefits of the new law will outweigh the costs,” Mr. Waxman and Mr. Stupak said in a memorandum to committee members. “But they cannot quantify the benefits until the law is implemented.”

AT&T, which took a $995 million charge to reflect the impact of the health care overhaul, said it would be “evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company.”