From the be careful what you ask for and I told you so files - Rep. Henry Waxman had requested all kinds of documents from major corporations regarding their SOX/SEC filings saying that they would take charges as a result of the health care reform act (in the hundreds of millions to billions each). He and fellow Democrats were pissed that the companies made those announcements.

But after receiving those documents, he and the Democrats dropped the hearings they had proposed.

Well, it turns out that the documents shed quite a bit of light on something that those Democrats and Waxman didn’t want made so public - that these same companies were under obligations to their shareholders to announce those changes under SOX and SEC rules, but that wasn’ t the end of it.

The documents also showed that these companies were looking at whether it would be cheaper to incur the penalties than to continue extending coverage to their employees. They were looking at dumping employees into the exchanges rather than take the hit on their balance sheets, which was exactly what critics had contended. Among those providing documents were Hewitt in advising Verizon. Hewitt provides health care and benefits guidance to Fortune 500 companies all over the country, and if they were giving that kind of guidance to Verizon, they were giving similar advice to their other customers.