Vin Suprynowicz

During the week following the Democratic enactment of “Part One” of Barack Obama’s federal takeover of American medicine (“Part Two” will come after “Part One” has bankrupted or nationalized most private health insurance providers — the Democrats will blame the failures on “greed”), “numerous companies have announced that they expect their taxes to increase, earnings to suffer, and health insurance offerings to change as a result of the Democrats’ health care bill becoming law,” reports Georgia GOP Congressman (and medical doctor) Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee.

“Isn’t that outrageous?!” Rep. Price asked in a Monday e-mail release. “What gives these companies the right to disagree with the Democrats’ assurances that ObamaCare won’t hurt employers or push Americans off their current insurance?”

In fact, “The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid” over the corporate announcements, reports the Washington Prowler, a feature of the American Spectator (http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/29/obama-in-rude-denial.)

“But fear not, America,” Rep. Price continues. “House Democrats are preparing to punish and intimidate the Unbelievers with a public flogging next month.”

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Rep. Waxman is also demanding company documents related to health care finances, a move one committee Republican describes to Byron York of the Washington Examiner as “an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats’ flawed health care reform legislation.”

Last Thursday and Friday, the companies — so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, John Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M — said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees.

The news “is an embarrassment for Democrats … not exactly what Democrats want to hear in the days after their historic victory,” The Examiner reports.

So Democratic enforcer Waxman has ordered the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subcommittee.

Rep. Waxman’s letter suggests he does not believe the companies’ analyses. “The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern,” Waxman wrote to Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T. The companies’ decisions, Waxman wrote, “appear to conflict with independent analyses.”

“Independent,” as in “what we told the Congressional Budget Office to say”?

Rep. Waxman’s letters request internal financial documents document that “the executives will undoubtedly view … as confidential,” The Examiner reports. “But if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman. And all as punishment for making a business decision in light of a new tax situation.”

“Apparently, these evil employers are conspiring together to make the Democrats look bad and trash the liberal utopian vision of universal health care,” comments Rep. Price, with a measure of Republican sarcasm. “They clearly should have ignored their duty to their employees and their shareholders, kept quiet about the impending tax hikes and changes to insurance options, and sent the Democrats a nice thank you letter for taking over the health care system.”

In fact, there’s some evidence the Democrats really are surprised — that (as Republicans consistently warned) they never really read and comprehended what was in their nearly 3,000-page law.

“Most of these people (in the administration) have never had a real job in their lives,” a senior lobbyist for one of the firms told the American Spectator over the weekend. “They don’t understand a thing about business, and that includes the President. My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn’t know what was in the bill.”

On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacking them for going public — despite the fact corporate CEOs are generally held to have some legal obligation to inform stockholders of anticipated financial bad news.

One Washington office head said the White House calls were accusatory and “downright rude,” the Spectator reports.

The companies are taking the charges because in 2013 they will lose a tax deduction on tax-free government subsidies they have had when they give retirees a Medicare Part D prescription-drug reimbursement. Many of these companies have more than 100,000 retirees each. AT&T may have more than three-quarters of a million retirees.

Neither Rep. Waxman nor Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individuals before they voted on the thing, one House Energy Democratic staffer tells the magazine.

“We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them,” says the staffer. “When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them.ÊThey really believed this bill would immediately lower costs. They just didn’t understand what they were voting on.”

And it’s only just begun.