Health Reform: As major businesses lay out the impact of ObamaCare in dollars and jobs, two things are clear: the costs will be enormous, and the president’s vow to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs” can no longer be believed.

Early returns on ObamaCare are coming in, and they belie proponents’ claims of job creation and cost reduction. The costs will increase. They are merely being shifted to the states and to America’s businesses, large and small.

AT&T, the country’s largest telephone company, announced Friday it will take a $1 billion first-quarter charge related to the new health care law. The noncash charge has been triggered by a change in the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies.

Bloomberg reports that health care charges may shave as much as $14 billion from U.S. corporate profits, according to an estimate by benefits consulting firm Towers Walton. That’s $14 billion that will not be available for expansion, research and development, or the hiring of new employees.

On Thursday, Deere & Co. announced that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will adversely impact its expenses for fiscal 2010. As a result of the legislation, expenses for the farm equipment manufacturer are expected to be about $150 million higher on an after-tax basis, mainly in the second quarter.

At issue is the new tax the health care bill imposes on subsidies paid to corporations for 28% of their retiree prescription costs under a 2003 Medicare bill.

“The 2003 legislation encouraged companies to stay in the game and continue to fund their retirees’ prescriptions,” Deere spokesman Ken Golden said. “Otherwise, the retirees would go onto the Medicare prescription program, which would cost the government more money.”

Now they’re being punished for doing what the government asked them to do.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., last Dec. 11, Deere and other signatories said the health care reform then under consideration “would negatively impact both retirees and companies.”

Nobody was listening.

“For months, the American Benefits Council, along with several employers and labor unions, warned that the retiree drug subsidy tax in the health care legislation would impose an enormous hit on company financial statements as soon as the bill was signed into law,” said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, in a statement on Friday.

Besides Deere, the letter was signed by Boeing, Con-Way Freight, Exelon, Navistar, Verizon, Caterpillar, MetLife, Public Service Enterprise Group and Xerox.

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