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Denny's owner plans 'Obamacare surcharge'

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/florida-restaurateur-to-impose-surcharge-for-obamacare.html

Florida Restaurateur to Impose Surcharge for ObamaCare

By Joshua Rhett Miller | Fox Business – 19 hours ago

Get ready to pay more for your Grand Slam.

A Florida restaurateur who operates roughly 40 Denny’s locations and five Hurricane Grill & Wings franchises in Florida, Virginia and Georgia intends to add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills to offset costs from ObamaCare beginning in January 2014 when the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented.

“People are trying to find ways to avoid the penalties and to avoid having to pay for ObamaCare,” John Metz told FoxNews.com. “Everyone’s looking for a way to not have to provide insurance for their employees. It’s essentially a huge tax on all us business people.”

To further offset the costs, Metz, who oversees roughly 1,200 employees as president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, said he also will slash most of the staff's time to fewer than 30 hours per week. That change will be announced to employees next month, he said.

“I want to explain it to everybody, to let them know what’s coming down the pike,” he said. “We like to keep our employees informed.”

The changes will force some front-of-the-house employees to look for second jobs, Metz said, but he simply cannot afford the penalties associated with ObamaCare.

“It’s a great concept,” he said. “We want to have everyone insured. The problem is, who is going to pay for it and how are we going to accomplish this?”

Under the current law, employers with more than 50 full-time (or equivalent) workers will be charged a penalty for the number of employees exceeding 30 full-time staffers who are not covered. With an average of 35 full-time employees per location, Metz said the $2,000 penalty would total roughly $70,000 per restaurant. Current coverage costs Metz up to $6,000 annually per full-time employee, he said. He currently provides coverage to about 250 employees.

“It’s going to be a big issue for all of us — for my employees and for me,” said Metz, who has been in the industry since 1975. “The ones that are working more than 28 hours, they’re going to act as if I’m cutting their hours and they’ll have to find another job.”

At Denny’s restaurants operated by Metz, the average check is $9, he said, meaning the ObamaCare surcharge if implemented would be 45 cents on that bill. At Hurricane Grill & Wings locations, where the average bill is $14.50, the surcharge would total 72 cents.

Metz said he believes the entire restaurant industry — even high-end locations — will ultimately embrace the idea.

“That is what I foresee and that is the easier, least painful way to deal with these added costs,” he said. “In a true playing field, everybody will impose this, from McDonald’s to Denny’s to even maybe the fine dining restaurants in order to have the funds to be able to pay for either insurance or the penalty for not providing insurance to their employees.”

Metz also is urging his employees to consider contacting their local elected officials in hopes of finding another solution to offset his looming increased costs.

“It’s never good news, but it is what it is,” Metz said of increasing customers’ checks. “We really should look for a better or different way to pay for [ObamaCare]. I think what we’re going to ultimately see here is a European-type system where we have a value added tax or a national sales tax.”

Metz continued: “I have a choice: try to live within the rules, or go out of business.”

In a statement to FoxNews.com, the National Restaurant Association said it’s “premature” to assess precisely how the health care law will affect individual businesses.

“We have warned for some time that the mechanics of the health care law are very difficult for the restaurant industry, which is a low-margin industry that works to keep costs down in order to provide value to customers,” said Scott DeFife, executive vice president of policy and government affairs for the National Restaurant Association. “All costs, from gas and commodities to labor and insurance, eventually impact the price on the menu. It is important that operators get very familiar with the provisions of the law and start planning for its implementation; however, it’s premature to make a specific assessment of exactly how the law will affect any individual business because there are so many details that are unknown.”

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"I want to take this opportunity to mention how thankful I am for an Obama re-election. The choice was clear. We cannot live in a country that treats homosexuals and women as second class citizens. Homosexuals deserve all of the rights and benefits of marriage that heterosexuals receive. Women deserve to be treated with respect and their salaries should not depend on their gender, but their quality of work. I am also thankful that the great, progressive state of California once again voted for the correct President. America is moving forward, and the direction is a positive one."

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Right, because the world is coming to an end if we must pay $0.15 more for a pizza so that Papa John's employees get to have health care coverage. Such an idiotic debate, really.

Every time Congress talks about raising the minimum wage, companies (big chain restaurants in particular) complain that they'll have to raise the prices on their menu. These chains are known for only paying their employees minimum wage and offering little to no benefits. In fact, they are the main culprits of why over 40 million working Americans have no health insurance.

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Right, because the world is coming to an end if we must pay $0.15 more for a pizza so that Papa John's employees get to have health care coverage. Such an idiotic debate, really.

It would be, if the employees were getting healthcare for it. Denny's is using the money to pay for policies and manage employees such that they still don't have to offer healthcare. I believe Papa John's is doing something similar, restricting hours for its employees. In the end, it looks like the effect of Obamacare will be that it will be practically impossible to get a job in this country working more than 29 hours a week in the service or similar industries. That doesn't really help anybody and it's more expensive (higher costs of training, management, and red tape for a larger work force).

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Obamacare - Destroying American Jobs Since 2009.

One of Obama's PROUDEST achievements!

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The Great Canadian to Texas Transfer Timeline:

2/22/2010 - I-129F Packet Mailed

2/24/2010 - Packet Delivered to VSC

2/26/2010 - VSC Cashed Filing Fee

3/04/2010 - NOA1 Received!

8/14/2010 - Touched!

10/04/2010 - NOA2 Received!

10/25/2010 - Packet 3 Received!

02/07/2011 - Medical!

03/15/2011 - Interview in Montreal! - Approved!!!

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It would be, if the employees were getting healthcare for it. Denny's is using the money to pay for policies and manage employees such that they still don't have to offer healthcare. I believe Papa John's is doing something similar, restricting hours for its employees. In the end, it looks like the effect of Obamacare will be that it will be practically impossible to get a job in this country working more than 29 hours a week in the service or similar industries. That doesn't really help anybody and it's more expensive (higher costs of training, management, and red tape for a larger work force).

Based on what cost to benefit analysis? I used to work at big chain restaurant and they actually offered health insurance for full-time employees. The catch is that most restaurant employees are considered part-time.

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So then there are two ways out of this: close the loopholes where employers can manipulate hours to get around offering health care benefits or admit that the employer sponsored health insurance model has failed and decouple health insurance from employment altogether.

This x 100! :thumbs:

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I would fully support decoupling health insurance and employment. I think it would greatly improve the health insurance market and allow people to really select the coverage that they need. But since these employers aren't giving their employees health insurance anyways, it wouldn't change anything for them. All it would do is mean that those with health insurance currently would lose that insurance and get a pay bump. Hopefully, health expenses would also become easier to deduct on your taxes so people wouldn't get hit with higher taxes as that compensation switches to a taxable type.

Edited by SMR
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This x 100! :thumbs:

That's where it's going. You can't have a system that's based on employers offering health insurance to employees unless employers are on board with it. It has become painfully obvious over the last few decades that employers are not on board with it any longer as more and more have either withdrawn their support altogether or have reduced their relative contribution to the benefit. I get it, health insurance is expensive and it cuts into the global competitiveness of US businesses. So let us admit that the model has failed and expand Medicare to every man, woman and child in America. Done.

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Kip, for being pro-union, you sure don't understand that this is the same kinds of tactics/arguments made by companies that oppose union wages or even raising the minimum wage.

Seems your heart burn rests in the fact that this guy itemized the charge on his bills, everyone else just adds it to the item cost.

Stealth big-gov is always preferable to the Left.

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"Those people who will not be governed by God


will be ruled by tyrants."



William Penn

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It's pretty easy: the Affordable Care Act will be fully implemented by 2014. That gives those employers who employ more than 50 people time to shop for the plan that works best for them. If We The People find out that some employers try to circumvent the law, the President will correct this with one signature.

This reminds me a bit of the safety belt law. I don't like it, so in the beginning I didn't use my safety belt and got a ticket. Some people wore T-shirts with a belt printed on it. In the end, we all have come to realize that those laws will be enforced and that we either wear a safety belt or we will be fined. The same applies to those innovative employers. Sure they can try to circumvent the law, but eventually they will be fined the implementation of the law will be approved, and in the end We The People will win anyway.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all . . . . The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic . . . . There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

President Teddy Roosevelt on Columbus Day 1915

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Good idea. Should be done for all the government mandates we are paying for. Whether it is a "surcharge" or not, it WILL be passed along to customers, employees or shareholders (if any) I really don't think anyone is stupid enough to believe it is FREE or that the "evil rich" are taking the cost from their personal bank acoutn and giving it to you :lol: Maybe auctioning off their yacht to pay for your health care? :lol:

I would really like to see someone advertise the actual price of something and then add ALL the tax as surcharges individually, in fact maybe that should be required by law! Medicare surcharge, SS surcharge, income tax surcharge, medical benefit surcharge...etc.

VERMONT! I Reject Your Reality...and Substitute My Own!

Gary And Alla

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