Biting The Bullet

Mounting retiree health costs account for a huge corporate loss

"UNACCEPTABLE." IT IS EASY TO SEE WHY G. RICHARD Wagoner, chief financial officer of General Motors, used that term to describe his company's health- care costs. GM will report a loss of about $23.5 billion for 1992 -- the largest in U.S. corporate history, almost all of it due to the costs of health care for the company's 594,000 retirees and their families. Forced by new accounting rules to reflect the burden of its retiree benefits more clearly on its books, GM had to bite a $20.8 billion bullet. Two months ago, Ford took a $7.5 billion hit for the same...

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