Local Wendy's Cuts Employee's Hours Obamacare

[bonnie]

I hope all employees of Wendy's that were Obama voters enjoy their gift of more leisure time.

Local Wendy's Cuts Employee's Hours Due to Obamacare Costs

Rick Moran

An Omaha-based Wendy's franchisee is cutting all non-management workers' hours to part time in order to avoid paying health insurance to its employees.

The cost of Obamacare was cited as the reason:

The company has announced that all non-management positions will have their hours reduced to 28 a week. Gary Burdette, Vice President of Operations for the local franchise, says the cuts are coming because the new Affordable Health Care Act requires employers to offer health insurance to employees working 32-38 hours a week. Under the current law they are not considered full time and that as a small business owner, he can't afford to stay in operation and pay for everyone's health insurance.

There are 11 Wendy's restaurants in the metro. "It has a huge effect on me and pretty much everybody that I work with," says Growbeck, who understands the reasoning and says other part-timers at other fast-food restaurants are facing the same problem. "I'm hoping that I can get some sort of promotion because then I would get my hours, but everybody is shooting for that because of the hours being cut."

Burdette says the decision affects around 100 employees. It was a tough one and he understands why people are upset, but the hour reduction is effective in two weeks for all non-management. Management employees will continue to have benefits as they are officially full time.

Liberals are claiming the cost of Obamacare is "negligible":

By moving workers to part-time status in order to avoid paying for their health benefits, the Wendy's franchise would shift the costs of insurance coverage onto hundreds of employees:

But anecdotal evidence suggests this strategy may backfire on the Omaha Wendy's operations. This fall, Denny's quickly distanced itself from a franchisee's similar ploy, while Darden Restaurants saw a sharp 37 percent drop in profit after threatening to cut workers to part-time.

Heaping blame on Obamacare may be a popular tactic among the fast food industry, but it is a misleading one. According to the Urban Institute, Obamacare has a negligible impact on business costs, leaving large companies virtually unaffected while actually reducing costs for small businesses.

If a business is paying $150 a month for employee health insurance coverage and those costs rise significantly - doubling in some cases - how is the impact on business costs "negligible?" And does anyone still believe the propaganda that Obamacare will actually reduce costs? The evidence is overwhelming that it won't.

Note: The drop in Darden Restaurant profits had little nothing to do with their plan to cut workers' hours in order to avoid paying health insurance. The suggestion that the public is punishing Darden is belied by the facts. Darden profits had been slipping since 2010 and there is no evidence that the plan to cut workers hours significantly damaged the company - certainly not not to the point that its profits dropped 37%.

Meanwhile, liberals continue to be in denial about Obamacare's effect on businesses of all sizes. Some companies will go under, some become so unprofitable they will have to significantly curtail its workforce, and some, like Wendy's, will have to cut employee hours to stay afloat. This is the reality facing American businesses and to try and sugar coat it by denying it is happening or will happen is about what we might expect from the "reality based community."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013...l#ixzz2HQ4ig8IX

Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

[OzarkWoman]

Elections have consequences so now all of those Obama supporters and voters can eat their crow and get over it.

[Ted Oplinger]

The cutting of all hours to part-time status is but one of the "unintended consequences" of the Obamacare law. Another will be the transfer of the non-managerial American work force career (not just Wendy's own) to holding two or more part-time jobs, rather than one full-time job. Added bonus for the Gov: the average citizen pays more in taxes working plural part-time jobs than one full-time job. So much for cutting taxes for the middle class...

When the work force operates below the cut-off of hours for benefits...the Gov will re-mandate the cut off to a lower hour amount. Repeat the cycle until every business decision comes from Washington, D.C., while all accountability remains with the businesses.

Fascism at its finest...

Blessings!

[phkrause]

GP, back in '05-08 the company I worked for was laying people off because of the high cost of health insurance. If I'm not mistaken Obamacare was not around at the time. Or am I wrong?

[bonnie]

GP, back in '05-08 the company I worked for was laying people off because of the high cost of health insurance. If I'm not mistaken Obamacare was not around at the time. Or am I wrong?

The high cost of health insurance has plagued businesses for some time.Almost everyone I know has seen a dramatic rise since Obama promised(lied) about lower health premiums.Health insurance companies did not pass mandatory laws and then claim they were going to save you money

My husband and I are paying considerably more this year.That is so we can help those still on the pacifiers have insurance till 26.Or so the notice I received with my congratulations letter for the coming year from the insurance company.Maybe I can buy a few birth control prescriptions for some women while I am at it

For to long to many have seen insurance as a necessity to pay the ordinary costs of health care.

[phkrause]

Health insurance rates have gone up every year from back when Nixon redid healthcare. HC was gonna go up much more than it has this year. The last few years before I got laid off, HC according to my employer had double every year for a number of years. This year from some other people I know HC has not doubled at all, it would've gone up even more.

[bonnie]

Health insurance rates have gone up every year from back when Nixon redid healthcare. HC was gonna go up much more than it has this year. The last few years before I got laid off, HC according to my employer had double every year for a number of years. This year from some other people I know HC has not doubled at all, it would've gone up even more.

Sep 25, 2012 1:19pm

Rising Health Costs Undermine Obama Pledge to Curb Trend

President Barack Obama's signature on the health insurance reform bill at the White House, March 23, 2010. President Obama promised the legislation would help reduce health insurance premiums, but growth has continued. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Two new independent studies of health insurance premiums and health care spending indicate both are rising at an accelerated pace, despite President Obama’s 2008 promise to contain those costs and his pledge that his health care legislation would reduce premiums.

Spending on health care rose 4.6 percent in 2011 — up $4,500 per person, on average — according to the nonpartisan Health Care Cost Institute. That’s up from a 3.8 growth rate in 2010.

Health insurance premiums for individuals and families also climbed year-over-year, up 3 percent ($186) on average for an individual and 4 percent ($672) on average for a family, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

During Obama’s term, between 2009 to 2012, premiums have climbed $2,370 for the average family with an employer-provided plan – a rate faster than the during the previous four years under President George W. Bush, according to Kaiser.

Investor’s Business Daily’s John Merline was first to note the difference in premiums climbing faster under Obama than the previous four years under Bush.

Experts point to rising health care costs as the driver of increased individual spending and higher premiums.

During the 2008 campaign and health care reform debate in 2009, President Obama said repeatedly that his plan would bend the cost curve downward, ultimately saving the average family $2,500 per year.

At a rally in Virginia in June 2008, Obama said: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”

“We’ll do it by investing in disease prevention, not just disease management; by investing in a paperless health care system to reduce administrative costs; and by covering every single American and making sure that they can take their health care with them if they lose their job,” he said at the time. “We’ll also reduce costs for business and their workers by picking up the tab for some of the most expensive illnesses.

“We won’t do all this twenty years from now, or ten years from now,” he said. “We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States.”

And in a debate with Sen. John McCain in October 2008: “The only thing we’re going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you. And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year,” he said.

Obama and Democrats enacted the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “Obamacare,” in March 2010, including many of the projected cost-saving measures that were hailed before voters.

Many of those cost-savings have yet to be realized.

President Obama explained in response to a question from ABC News at a Sept. 2010 press conference that “bending the cost curve on health care is hard to do.”

“I said at the time, it wasn’t going to happen tomorrow, it wasn’t going to happen next year. It took us decades to get into a position where our health care costs were going up 6, 7, 10 percent a year. And so our goal is to slowly bring down those costs,” he said.

Obama added, “as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins, that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that. We didn’t think that we were going to cover 30 million people for free, but that the long-term trend in terms of how much the average family is going to be paying for health insurance is going to be improved as a consequence of health care.”

Last year, I asked White House deputy chief of staff Nancy-Ann DeParle about that $2,500 in savings the president pledged. She insisted families will see that savings seven years after the president said it would be achieved — by 2019.

“Many of the changes in the Affordable Care Act are starting this year, and in succeeding years,” DeParle told ABC News, “and by 2019 we estimate that the average family will save around $2,000.”

DeParle said that the “big increases that occurred (in 2010) were probably driven by insurance plans overestimating what the impact would be and maybe trying to take some profits upfront before some of the changes in the Affordable Care Act occur.”

Administration officials say they never claimed health care costs would go down, only that they would grow at a slower rate than they would have without the Affordable Care Act.

“It is clear that in recent years health care cost growth has slowed,” Health and Human Services department spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt told ABC News. “In the ten years before the health care law was passed, health care costs increased at 8.7 percent per year on average, according to the independent Kaiser Family Foundation. This study showed a rate of increase of 3.8 percent in 2010 and 4.6 percent in 2011, while in a separate study, the Kaiser Family Foundation recently estimated a rate of increase of 4.0 percent in 2012, illustrating that overall health-care cost growth has significantly slowed in recent years.”

Families are already enjoying savings through curtailed insurance premium growth under the law – compared to what premiums would be without it – officials say. They also point to tax credits and other provisions that are estimated to save middle-income families who purchase private insurance through new exchanges as much as $2,300 per year in 2014.

-Jake Tapper and Devin Dwyer

[bonnie]

Health insurance rates have gone up every year from back when Nixon redid healthcare. HC was gonna go up much more than it has this year. The last few years before I got laid off, HC according to my employer had double every year for a number of years. This year from some other people I know HC has not doubled at all, it would've gone up even more.

I deal with parents of special needs children almost daily.

Obamacare has placed more of a burden on them.How they managed the care of their children at home I can't even imagine.

Each and everyone,that is throughout the US BTW,has faced cutbacks that place them in a position that they don't know how they will manage.Doubt it if you will,but I doubt that all are lying to me.

The number of their in home care givers has been cut back and the amount of tax free money they could put into a savings account to help with their costs tax free is being cut. Several of my clients have adult children with the mental capacity of a 2-4 year old.Totally dependent on them.Some that have managed to keep their children at home where they believe they belong don't know how much longer they can do that under Obamacare. But of course those handicapped children have little potential value to the country as a whole.They certainly never will pay taxes or contribute in any meaningful way