The Republicans have already become the party of health care, as Donald Trump warned last week. If by "party of health care" you mean "party that is maximizing profits for healthcare companies." That's exactly what they've accomplished with the tax scam they passed at the end of 2017. Axios analyzed financial documents of the nation's largest players in the industry, documenting how much the tax overhaul "helped pad their bottom lines."
It's a lot of help to their bottom lines, much of it just in the final quarter of 2018. Just a few examples:
- Drug giant Pfizer received a $563 million tax benefit in the fourth quarter, and its corporate income tax rate in all of 2018 was just 6%.
- Johnson & Johnson's effective tax rate in the last quarter of 2018 was 2.6%.
- Almost half of the $551 million tax break recorded by hospital chain HCA Healthcare in 2018 came in the fourth quarter.
A 2.6 percent tax rate for Johnson & Johnson, which saw a profit boost of $13.8 billion over the fourth quarter of 2017. The most profitable companies were pharmaceuticals and device manufacturers.
