Tag Archives: Health-care

News

Five Guys franchise owner says Obamacare will force him to raise prices

3 Comments

Five Guys is my favorite place to go for a reasonably-priced cheeseburger. But the reasonable prices might be changing now.

Excerpt:

Business owners across America say they’re experiencing poor sales, holding back hiring, and planning layoffs because of “Obamacare,” or so says the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book (an overview of the business conditions in each of its 12 districts).

But in case you don’t trust the Beige Book’s anecdotal reporting, here’s something else to consider: Five Guys franchise holder Mike Ruffer said on Monday that the cost of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s landmark healthcare bill, will force him to raise the price of burgers and hot dogs, according to the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard.

“He will need all the profits from at least one of his eight outlets just to cover his estimated added $60,000-a year in new Obamacare costs,” Bedard’s report notes.

“Any added costs are going to have to be passed on,” said Ruffer, who operates eight Five Guys in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C. area.

But wait! There’s more: Ruffer also said that he had to scrap plans to build three additional restaurants because he’s still waiting for after the Obama administration to explain all the rules and penalties involved in the healthcare bill.

[…]The report goes on to explain that Ruffner thought he’d be exempt from “Obamacare” because he built each restaurant as its own company. However, the healthcare law doesn’t recognize this distinction – so now he’s exploring whether laying off employees or cutting back hours will keep his franchise safe from “Obamacare.”

“He said that ‘scorched earth plan,’ however, would hurt his restaurants, so Ruffer is likely to either pay the fine or buy insurance,” the Washington Exmainer reports. “But spreading the costs over his basic menu of fries, drinks, burgers and hot dogs, could scare off customers, he worries. He said that the recent spike in gas prices cut into his profits since fewer people were stopping at his restaurants.”

“And the health care law isn’t only going to hit Ruffer. He’s quizzed his workers to ask if they understand that they will be fined if they don’t get health insurance. Just one of 20 workers were aware of the $95 tax penalty that rises to $695 by 2016,” the report adds.

The recent spike in gas prices is also caused in part by Obama’s blocking of American energy development. It as if everything he does hurts the individual consumer.

Maybe next time, people will turn off their televisions and hit the books before voting. In the meantime, the fairest way to decide which employees to lay off is to take a walk through parking lot and pick every employee with an Obama sticker on their car.

News

How the new Obamacare mandates are reducing full-time employment

2 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Here’s a trend you’ll be reading more about: part-time “job sharing,” not only within firms but across different businesses.

It’s already happening across the country at fast-food restaurants, as employers try to avoid being punished by the Affordable Care Act. In some cases we’ve heard about, a local McDonalds has hired employees to operate the cash register or flip burgers for 20 hours a week and then the workers head to the nearby Burger King or Wendy’s to log another 20 hours. Other employees take the opposite shifts.

Welcome to the strange new world of small-business hiring under ObamaCare. The law requires firms with 50 or more “full-time equivalent workers” to offer health plans to employees who work more than 30 hours a week. (The law says “equivalent” because two 15 hour a week workers equal one full-time worker.) Employers that pass the 50-employee threshold and don’t offer insurance face a $2,000 penalty for each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. So by hiring the 50th worker, the firm pays a penalty on the previous 20 as well.

These employment cliffs are especially perverse economic incentives. Thousands of employers will face a $40,000 penalty if they dare expand and hire a 50th worker. The law is effectively a $2,000 tax on each additional hire after that, so to move to 60 workers costs $60,000.

A 2011 Hudson Institute study estimates that this insurance mandate will cost the franchise industry $6.4 billion and put 3.2 million jobs “at risk.” The insurance mandate is so onerous for small firms that Stephen Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, predicts that “Many stores will have to cut worker hours out of necessity. It could be the difference between staying in business or going out of business.” The franchise association says the average fast-food restaurant has profits of only about $50,000 to $100,000 and a margin of about 3.5%.

Because other federal employment regulations also kick in when a firm crosses the 50 worker threshold, employers are starting to cap payrolls at 49 full-time workers. These firms have come to be known as “49ers.” Businesses that hire young and lower-skilled workers are also starting to put a ceiling on the work week of below 30 hours. These firms are the new “29ers.” Part-time workers don’t have to be offered insurance under ObamaCare.

[…]A 2012 survey of employers by the Mercer consulting firm found that 67% of retail and wholesale firms that don’t offer insurance coverage today “are more inclined to change their workforce strategy so that fewer employees meet that [30 hour a week] threshold.”

The biggest problem I have with these socialist policies like Obamacare is that they often affect people who didn’t vote for Obama. It wouldn’t bother me at all if only Democrats were harmed by Democrat policies. But I don’t like it when innocent people who didn’t want these policies have to suffer the consequences of Democrat policies. Maybe we just need to be better at explaining things to Democrats using very simple words before the next election, so that they can vote for competence and results instead of voting for charisma and rhetoric.

News

How privatization turned the worst-performing NHS hospital around

1 Comment

From the American Spectator.

Excerpt:

[T]he most successful of the “drastic” experiments put in place is that much-hated bête noire of progressives and Obamacare supporters everywhere: privatization. The Mail Onlinereports that Hinchingbrooke Hospital, “The first NHS trust to be operated entirely by a private company has recorded one of the highest levels of patient satisfaction in the country.”

In other words, the Brits were so desperate to fix their crumbling health care system, they experimented with the private market and it is outperforming government-run health care without breaking a sweat. Hinchingbrooke was, like so many hospitals in the UK, about to go under when a private company called Circle Holdings was awarded a 10-year contract to run it. This is the first time such a company has been given control of an NHS hospital and the results will not come as a surprise to anyone who understands free enterprise.

As the Mail Online goes on to report, “The company running the trust has slashed losses at the hospital by 60 per cent and will soon begin to pay… debts built up over years of mismanagement.” Though will be no surprise to free market advocates, it has been a real eye-opener to the NHS. Privatization isn’t the dirty word it once was in the much-maligned health system: “The takeover deal … is seen as a blueprint for the future of many NHS trusts. The George Eliot Hospital in Warwickshire is already considering adopting the model.”

It will also come as no surprise to those who believe the market provides the most efficient health care delivery model that, in addition to dramatically improving the financial prospects, privatization has improved patient satisfaction. Before Hinchingbrooke was taken over by Circle Holdings, patients had a very low opinion of the hospital and the care it provided. Now, this perception is dramatically improved: “Patient satisfaction has risen to 85 per cent, placing Hinchingbrooke in the top six of the East of England’s 46 hospitals.”

I took a look at the UK Daily Mail article and found an interesting section:

Patient satisfaction has risen to 85 per cent, placing Hinchingbrooke in the top six of the East of England’s 46 hospitals. The feedback is calculated by asking families and patients whether they would recommend the hospital, then weighting the answers compared to local peers.

Previously the trust was among the lowest ranking for satisfaction.

Figures also show that Hinchingbrooke has risen from being one of the worst performing trusts to one of the best under the private firm’s management.When Circle took over, the hospital was consistently near the bottom of the 46 trusts, with many patients waiting more than four hours in A&E.

It now tops the list for short waiting times, seeing 98.2 per cent of patients within the required window.
The hospital also ranks fifth for the proportion of patients with suspected cancer having tests within a fortnight.

Before the takeover it had missed targets every month since June 2010.

It now treats 89 per cent of cancer patients within 62 days, beating the 85 per cent target.

Circle saved millions of pounds a year by cutting out arduous paperwork and middle management.

Under the former ownership, a lengthy form had to be filled out every time a lightbulb needed changing, in a process that often took more than a week.

The group, which runs independent hospitals in Reading and Bath, inherited debts of £39million with the project.

The hospital had been expected to lose £10million last year, but this has been whittled down to  £3.7million by the Circle group.

It made up the deficit from its own coffers, rather than taxpayer funds, and is expected to break even in the current year.

Do you think that we might consider privatizing Medicaid and Medicare, since we know that privatization is good for health care consumers and taxpayers? Of course not, because privatization is bad for politicians, who want to retain control of health care. Privatization is good, but we’re not going to get it unless we vote the socialists out.