Dennis wieghs in

There's a blog called Dennis The Peasant, which is run by a guy who happens to be a CPA. He knows what he's talking about when he discusses taxes, accounting, income statements, all the number-crunching, bean-counting goodness of the accounting trades. He's been looking at ObamaCare and crunching the numbers. Some of his observations are interesting.

Question: On March 22, 2010, millions of Americans are covered under the Medicare Part D Retiree Drug Subsidy Program. On March 23, 2030, President Barack Obama signs Obamacare into law. On March 24, 2010, millions of Americans find out they may end up losing their Medicare Part D Retiree Drug Subsidy Program benefits because Obamacare taxes the subsidy that enables companies to offer the benefit cost effectively. Do you think that those millions of Americans who are now staring at a loss of a meaningful benefit are going to...

* Thank Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for Obamacare?
* Thank their Democratic Representative and/or Senator for voting "for" Obamacare?
* Blame the nihilistic and obstructionist Republicans? Or,
* Curse the Cruel Hand of Fate?

Think real hard before answering.

Heh! This legislation is the gift that keeps on giving.

**UPDATE** Megan McArdle weighs in on Waxman's war on accounting.

Here's the story: one of the provisions in the new health care law forces companies to treat the current subsidies for retiree health benefits as taxable income. This strikes me as dumb policy; there's not much point in giving someone a subsidy, and then taxing it back, unless you just like doing extra paperwork. And since the total cost of the subsidy, and any implied tax subsidy, is still less than we pay for an average Medicare Part D beneficiary, we may simply be encouraging companies to dump their retiree benefits and put everyone into Part D, costing us taxpayers extra money.

But this is neither here nor there, because Congress already did it. And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law.

The companies have to take the charges, under Generally Accepted Accounting Procedure, (GAAP) which rules all accounting in the United States. The rules are fixed on how companies and individuals account for money.

Henry Waxman thinks that's mean, and he's summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It's not clear what they're supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I've watched congressional hearings. There's no chance that four CEO's are going to explain the accounting code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format.

This is kabuki theater at its finest.