Politics

General Electric to investors: Obamacare is hurting our medical business

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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General Electric is telling its investors that Obamacare is to blame for recent losses in the company’s health care division, The Daily Caller has learned.

“Hospitals and clinics appear to be delaying purchases and responses to the ACA [Affordable Care Act],” stated GE senior vice president and CFO Jeffrey S. Bornstein in the company’s first-quarter earnings call.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, an outside economic adviser to President Obama, confirmed at a shareholder meeting Wednesday that the health sector is experiencing uncertainty.

Asked at the meeting about Obamacare’s impact on the company’s earnings, Immelt responded, “I think there’s still a lot of uncertainty in health care and we’ll just have to see that over time.”

The company’s health care unit, which produces medical and biopharmaceutical technologies and which grew in 2013, showed losses in revenues, segment profits, margins and orders in the first quarter of 2014.

The Daily Caller has reported extensively on Obamacare’s damage to the medical device and technology industry. By February, the health-care law had already cost 33,000 jobs in the industry and 132,000 more were expected, according to a report from an industry trade group.

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