UPS Chief Financial Officer Kurt Kuehn confirmed to CNBC's Squawk Box Monday that Obamacare's mandates had increased costs for the company and were the reason it dropped health benefits for 15,000 spouses of its employees.
Full exchange:
BECKY QUICK: Kurt, can I ask you while you're here, too, there was some news that you all made about dropping benefits for 15,000 spouses of your employees. You cited that back to Obamacare. What happened?
KURY KUEHN: What we did, actually, was just say -- the spouse of one of our employees that is employed and their employer offers health care insurance, then we would expect that employer to cover their insurance. So we didn't drop health care coverage for anybody that couldn't get health care. And what -- then what we did --
QUICK: What does that have to do with Obamacare?
KUEHN: Well, the Obamacare mandates did increase and do increase costs for UPS. We're managing health care inflation plus some of the increased coverage mandates led us to make a decision that now that we know that most employers will provide health care, it made sense for that employer to cover the cost of that benefit.