Monday, November 12, 2012

The Papa John's 14 Cent Meme

There's a meme going around that Papa John's owner is "complaining" when he says the cost of Obamacare will likely result in a 14 cent increase in the cost of a Papa John's pizza. Of course, they cite his large house ... so of course clearly he's an evil man. He's been successful and he wants people to die for a mere 14 cents - that's the gist of the spin, it seems. Looks to me, doing the math, we're talking about $2.4 million (Update: I based this on 17 million pizzas a year x 0.14, which I found with a cursory google search.  Apparently Papa John's says $5 million to $8 million). His full time employees are covered already. It's the part time employees that aren't. My guess is that these are mostly kids still on their parents' plans, working their first jobs or working through college - the nature of these kinds of jobs... the ones you get when you're establishing your viability as an employee.

When I read the story I get that he's not actually complaining, just stating the fact of cost. The people who are complaining are the people, apparently, who say they'd be happy to pay the 14 cents more for a pizza. I find this confusing.

The real problem is the Mom & Pop shop on the verge of success with around 45 employees thinking of expanding ... they won't.

Which means actually Obamacare helps the big corporate giants and hurts those on the brink of competing with them.

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