Before Zero-care passed Waxman would have hauled them before a committee for NOT doing this.
Henry Waxman is an ornament to his profession.
Whatever that profession may be.
At first I thought, maybe “pimp”, but pimps are respectable and conservative businessmen in comparison.
It isn’t merely a responsibility to shareholders. It is the law, which requires a company, upon learning of a “material change” in future earnings, to disclose this information.
The removal of the deduction for Medicare payments of retirees from a company is pretty clear in the health care “reform” bill, and the projected impact is fairly easy to compute based on actuarial stats. After that, it is merely accounting as to when these losses are realized.
Net/net, I’d expect (in aggregate) that there is a class of companies with retiree healthcare liabilities who are going to have a hit to future earnings of between 5 to 10% when they finish estimating and reporting the loss of the deduction.
If Waxman (and other liberals) want these companies to keep this quiet, they’re asking these companies to play chicken with the SEC and the law.