Posted on 03/27/2010 10:14:56 AM PDT by bigred44
I don't understand what the new health care law will do to service industry businesses, especially fast-food companies (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Subway, etc.). Seems that it would require every employee, even part-time staff, to be covered with a health insurance policy.
If a policy costs $5,000 per employee per year, and a part timer works 30 hours per week, that would increase the cost per employee by almost $3.50/hr. That's a 50% increase in salary costs.
I can see that having a huge impact on who gets hired for these businesses. You would see teens and new immigrants, who dominate these stores, being dropped for healthy retirees or the recently unemployed, who are more likely to stay with the company. Why would a store manager go to the trouble and paperwork to hire someone who could leave at any time, or might have small children with a lot of health care needs?
I know that there's an exemption for small businesses that have less than 50 employees. But the large fast food companies can't do this, as McDonalds staff all work for the corporation.
A company like McDonalds, with over 2 million employees, will also pay a huge increase in Medicare contributions for all of its employees.
And who knows what that would do to prices? $10 Big Mac meals? $15 sub sandwiches? $25 pizza?
Has anyone looked at this?
Well, it fits in with the administration’s effort to drive fast food providers out of business - if it is not with health care costs, it will be due to regulations of the food industry so that we are not allowed to make a choice that would be considered a mistake by the illuminati.
I can send you my pizza and hamburger recipes if you would like. Given the escalating costs, it is clear to me that these chains will either raise prices or go out of business. Less jobs for illegal aliens, I might add (sarcastically).
There goes the dollar menu!
Technically, I don’t think they’d have to provide insurance.
I think they can instead pay a fine. No? And I think that’s cheaper than the health care =- particularly when congress gets to decide what that coverage must include.
So basically it ends up being a tax on the employer.
Big surprise, huh? :)
Pretty much with the passage of this bill not only have they taxed the middle class beyond comphrension they have also taken away the abilty to frequent resturants because no one will have any money left over to pay for a meal at McD’s. Instead of a $5 per person the cost has now atleast doubled if not tripled.
Will it still apply to franchises?
I read in the last couple of days where some of these large franchises will start laying off immediately.
My guess is that it’s better to add another minute to five minutes on the customer’s wait...than pay healthcare costs for some guy. Figure out of sixty employees at a Micky D’s now...they will quickly chop at least eight off. The pizza places will do the same. So in about four months...you’ve got three hundred thousand extra guys on the street...who were employed...and the franchise business sector will not offer any future employment chances to people.
The president can sit and think about how to create new jobs now....perhaps hiring the burger kids to build roads?
Now... think further up the supply chain. What do you think this POS policy is going to do to commodity prices? All of this is “intended consequences”, courtesy of the same POS Obamanation that just yesterday stating that conservatives were exaggerating about the policy's detrimental effects on the country.
As an example, if a McDonald's franchise owns 5 stores, and has one corporation, the employee headcount would be large enough to require health care coverage. But if each store is a separate corp, each separate corporation may fall below the thresshold. Then you set up a 6th corporation for the administrative functions, and suddenly you have a lot of smaller companies intended to avoid an onerous tax. And all the legal and compliance costs required to have all those separate companies.
Of course, the real intended solution is to make all the employers realize that they are better off paying the fine and throwing all the employees into the government program.
Terrible in the macro-economic sense, but rational and desireable in the micro-encon sense for each employer. And we end up with a large government program that drops people through the cracks.
Eventually there is no profit, and all of America will be trying to raise their tax/price to cover their little empires. With no outisde source of wealth, we will find that eating your own tail will only make a shorter snake, until there is nothing left.
...perhaps hiring the burger kids to build roads?
In my mind that’s always been one of the biggest lies of this POS Marxist regime... why are they so interested in building roads, when they work daily to devise ways of keeping us off of them?
Many McDonald’s outlets are franchisees; they might get along with less than 50 employees. Maybe there will be a big push to reorganize companies into smaller units.
Once again, the lawyers benefit.
OK. But does the law let all of McDonalds off the hook on employee policies? Can they just act like they have nothing to do with the individual franchises?
Are these independent franchises totally independent, or do they have to follow Corporate employment policies?
Perhaps a loophole for now, but the revenue potential for the government is too great. And the 18,000 newly minted IRS agents will figure this out. [Shhh! They may be listening].
Maybe a few of the large corps will sue to see O’Boozers BC.
Actually, I don’t think we have to speculate too much here. England has already implemented all this crap for many years. Look at England today and you’ll see Obama’s US tomorrow.
I think many corporations will “spin off” divisions and then enter into contracts wtih those spin-offs to affect their obligations to the government, which will make those entities all less efficient, and will harm America’s competitiveness in the world. We stopped caring about that a long time ago, however.
I would guess most of the teens would be on their parents policy. I have a feeling that one will be enforced.
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