We chose Greece
By Tom Quiner
Papa John’s CEO, John Schnatter: “Obamacare is a lose-lose.”
Barack Obama and the Democrats own the economy. And they own the coming economic carnage of Obamacare.
The American people chose, and we chose the Greece model championed by Democrats. Greece economics is characterized by unsustainable public debt and entitlement programs.
Let me give you but one sample of the coming economic hit from Obamacare.
Employers of workers earning $15 per hour or less per year are going to be required to provide very expensive health insurance for these employees.
The cost of this insurance is $15,000 for a family of four.
If the employer doesn’t provide the insurance, they will pay a $2000 fine.
If you are the employer, what would you do? Here are your options:
1. Pay the fine. It’s cheaper, leaving the employee on the hook to get his/her own insurance.
2. Pay the insurance and reduce the employee’s salary accordingly. If the employee earns $30,000 per year, his salary would be reduced to $15,000 with the remaining $15,000 going to the mandated cadillac insurance plan.
3. Cut the hours back for employees to less than 30 hours per week, making them part timers whom employers do not have to insure.
It’s a safe bet your employee doesn’t want option #2, which means you’re going to pursue #1 or #3. That’s what we’re seeing in the food industry, a reduction in hours for employees as a means of survival for these businesses.
John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, said Obamacare would cost his organization $5 to $8 million a year, so they’re going to be forced to cut back hours to save jobs and save the company. Says Schnatter:
“It’s common sense. That’s what I call lose-lose.”
What a perfect way to characterize Obamacare: a lose-lose proposition.
So what happens to the employee who cannot possibly afford the expensive coverage mandated by Obamacare? The government will pick up the tab by providing them with “free” insurance via Medicaid or state-run insurance exchanges.
Remember the promise that Obamacare was going to cut the deficit? Guess again.
Obamacare has created incentives for broad swaths of the business community to cut back hours on their employees at the same time they stick taxpayers with the cost for the insurance.
You can call it lose-lose or Greece.
That’s what the voters chose out of a misguided notion that they can get something for nothing.
Welcome to Obama’s second term.
Good piece — and I really like the cartoon.
How unfortunate that so many believed the President’s lie that they could keep their same insurance, doctor etc. Of course he knew that insurance companies would never be able to compete and cancel policies. Of course he knew that companies would do exactly as you outlined in your commentary. I am not the brightest bulb on the planet and yet I had this figured out immediately upon implimentation of the “mandate”. Which leads me to conclude that when education in the U.S. was dumbed down, boy was it ever!
It will be too late, but I will not fail to say, “I told you so” after the whining about rationing, long lines, too few doctors, taxes going up etc commence. It won’t be long.
Step right up ladies and gentlemen, pull the lever on the candy machine and out will pop your free healthcare, courtesy of your messiah, Barack Obama! (Cue the carnival music …..) Mike Huckabee reported on his radio program today that the left is hammering Papa John’s pizza and Applebee’s, because both organizations have communicated what is to come for them and their employees in the wake of Obamacare, employing their usual expected level of class, calling for boycotts. NICE. Endeavor to drive them further out of business; how very logical, compassionate, inclusive, and of course, productive of you. It’s clearly best, above all else, to not let reality impinge on one’s delusion of socialist utopia.
Are there any other affordable health care strategies worth looking at?
It’s a real challenge, America has the worst healthcare outcomes of any of the top 10 democracies in the world.
I’m not American so have no right to wiegh in on either side of the debate, but I’m trying to follow the policy and its effects as developing a sustainable health care system is a masiive challenge to all western societies moving forward.
We’ve got the perfect storm of living longer than ever before, at the same time living with the most serious health issues in history…any thoughts on who’s getting it right?
Mark, there are two competing approaches to solving the health insurance crisis, which could be contrasted as the carrot vs. the stick approach. Obamacare uses the stick. It threatens fines and taxes to force people into a certain behavior. A better approach using the carrot approach was presented by John Goodman, CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. You can read it here: http://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2012/04/07/is_there_a_republican_alternative_to_obamacare
Let me know what you think.