Those who have saved for retirement…ie shareholders…take heed. This is coming your way too:
Insurer Prudential Financial Inc. said Monday that it will take a $100 million charge in the first quarter in relation to the recent health care overhaul legislation.
The life insurance and annuities provider said in a regulatory filing that it will take the charge against earnings in the first quarter.
Prudential joins a growing list of companies that have said they will take accounting charges because of the health care bills. AT&T said last week it would take a $1 billion charge in the first quarter. AK Steel Corp., 3M Co., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy have also said they would take smaller charges.
All the while the Obama plan of vilifying capitalism is in full gear:
Democrats clearly plan to blame the private sector for all the downsides of their health plan. In a private lobbying session, President Obama told liberal lawmakers that the bill is only “a beginning.” Any increase in costs and premiums — both of which are inevitable — will be attributed to corporate malfeasance requiring yet more government intervention.
Democrats can’t say they weren’t warned about the coming write-downs. Companies began to receive a tax-free, deductible subsidy in 2003 to continue prescription-drug coverage for their retirees, a ploy to keep the firms from dumping retirees into the new government prescription-drug program. Outside experts and big employers counseled against ending the deductibility, pointing out that it would adversely affect the companies’ financial statements immediately. (Account- ing rules require corporations to note the long-term effect of the new liability right away.)
These warnings got shelved under a category ensuring their brusque dismissal: Information Inconvenient to the Passage of Health-Care Reform. Now that the prediction has come to pass, it’s all AT&T’s fault.
And if that isn’t good enough for ya check out our Vice President:
“It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care,” Biden says. “If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’ — well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair — giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.”
The top quintile of Americans earned 55.7% of pretax income and paid 69.3% of federal taxes in 2006, according to the most recent CBO data. But the Vice President isn’t buying the idea that the wealthiest are already paying their fair share, noting the top 1% of earners get 22% of all income made in the U.S.
Socialism and mediocrity here we come.
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