Keep Tipping Your Servers

[w1z4rd]

The No. 1 consequence of Obama’s re-election is that it essentially guarantees his signature health care law will be implemented. And not everyone is happy about it. Zane Tankel owns about 40 Applebees franchises. He says that as a result of the law’s penalties on employers who don’t offer health insurance to their workforce “we won’t build more restaurants, we won’t hire more people.” John Metz owns about 40 Denny’s outlets, several Dairy Queens, and is the brains behind the Hurricane Grill & Wings chain is even blunter. He says he’ll be tacking a 5 percent surcharge onto customers’ bills in order to defray the costs of Obamacare.

If you’re not happy about that surcharge, he’s got an answer for you. Cranky customers “can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server, who is the primary beneficiary of Obamacare.”

These guys are being jerks, but they’re helpfully bringing to light what was obscured during the original debate over the health care bill—rich businessmen don’t like it because it raises their taxes. The Republican Party is very sensitive to the views of rich businessmen, and so they didn’t like the health care bill. The debate, unfortunately, got bogged down in a lot of nonsense about death panels and socialism rather than focusing on the brass tacks stuff that matters. Low-income workers—the kind of people likely to be working as servers at Denny’s—really will see huge benefits from the law. And the kind of people who own dozens of chain restaurant franchises really will suffer, at least a bit.

Read the rest: http://www.slate.com/articles/busin..._and_the_pizza.html?google_editors_picks=true

What assess.

 

[empirex]

Asses?

You mean Obama and his crowd for forcing Obamacare on America. Yeah I'm with you on that.
LOL Ghoti, it's called spreading the wealth. Otherwise known as socialism.

That's what you get for electing a (cult) personality, and not a president. You get the government you deserve.

Top Five Worst Obamacare Taxes Coming in 2013

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making everything from pacemakers to prosthetics more expensive.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” – a $13 billion tax increase: The 30-35 million Americans who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).
There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are several million families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families.

The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income – a $123 billion tax increase: This is a new, 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income:

[table="width: 500"]
[tr]
[td].[/td]
[td]Capital Gains[/td]
[td]Dividends[/td]
[td]Other[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]2012[/td]
[td]15%[/td]
[td]15%[/td]
[td]35%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]2013+ (Current Law)[/td]
[td]23.8%[/td]
[td]43.4%[/td]
[td]43.4%[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

The Obamacare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions – a $15.2 billion tax increase: Currently, those Americans facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). This tax increase imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. By limiting this deduction, Obamacare widens the net of taxable income for the sickest Americans. This tax provision will most harm near retirees and those with modest incomes but high medical bills.

The Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike -- an $86.8 billion tax increase: The Medicare payroll tax is currently 2.9 percent on all wages and self-employment profits. Under this tax hike, wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of married couples) will face a 3.8 percent rate instead. This is a direct marginal income tax hike on small business owners, who are liable for self-employment tax in most cases. The table below compares current law vs. the Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike:

[table="width: 500"]
[tr]
[td].[/td]
[td]First $200,000
($250,000 Married)
Employer/Employee[/td]
[td]All Remaining Wages
Employer/Employee[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Current Law[/td]
[td]1.45%/1.45%
2.9% self-employed[/td]
[td]1.45%/1.45%
2.9% self-employed[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Obamacare Tax Hike[/td]
[td]1.45%/1.45%
2.9% self-employed[/td]
[td]1.45%/2.35%
3.8% self-employed[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Obamacare to Bankrupt Businesses and Families

Freedom Works has compiled a list of companies planning to lay off workers and outsource jobs because of Obamacare. Boston Scientific will be doing both, as CEO Ray Elliott has announced the company will cut up to 1,400 employees and shift workers and investments to China. In order to cover the $24 million in estimated additional Obamacare expenses, auto parts manufacturer Dana Holding Corp. has let go of several higher ups and hinted at more layoffs coming to its 25,000+ workforce. Medical device manufacturers Medtronic and Stryker have both cut at least a thousand jobs already.

Last Year, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the House Budget Committee that the Affordable Care Act would cost this country 800,000 jobs.
Unfortunately, layoffs won’t be the only consequence of Obamacare. Consumers are about to foot the bill for the president’s health care reform in a lot more ways than one.

Business analysts are forecasting that many companies will turn to price hikes to offset the financial burden of complying with Obamacare. Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter claims the health care law will cost his company $5 to $8 billion annually; in an attempt to neutralize this, Schnatter has announced he will raise product prices. He isn’t the only one. An NY Applebee’s owner said Obamacare will cost the company millions, forcing them to freeze hiring and stop building new restaurants. Waivers aren’t even stopping some companies from instituting price increases. Even though McDonalds has been granted an Obamacare waiver, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Peter Bensen announced in July the company would see up to $420 million in new health care costs, ultimately leading to higher menu prices.

Regardless of what restaurants a person chooses to patron, the bigger picture here is an expensive trend that will likely spread across our nation, from business to business and wallet to wallet.

While we are all paying higher prices for products, employees will also shoulder the financial burden of health care premium increases or a smaller paycheck due to their hours being cut — or both.

A National Business Group survey found that employers will raise health care rates an average of at least seven percent due to Obamacare, but many are being forced to hike rates much higher. Universities across North Carolina have cited Obamacare as the reason for “substantial” student health care premium hikes; some students in that state will now pay double for insurance. Walmart recently raised health care premiums, in some cases 36 percent, leaving many of its employees unable to afford any health insurance coverage at all.

The Affordable Care Act also changes the definition of what a full-time employee is (the massive piece of legislation requires 18 pages just to define it) to anyone who works 30 hours a week. As the majority of Walmart employees are not full-time, the company may cut worker hours even further to avoid full-time designation. Darden Restaurants, owners of national chain restarurants Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse among others, is “experimenting with limiting the hours of some of its workers to avoid health care requirements”. National grocery store chain Kroger has announced it will be doing the same.

As if all of this financial burden sliding downhill isn’t enough, a recent poll of more than 13,000 doctors found that a whopping 84 percent feel America’s medical profession is in decline, and six out of every 10 doctors have a negative view of America’s health care future following Obamacare. More than 60 percent said they’d retire now if given the option, up 15 percent from before the law passed. The U.S. already faced a chronic doctor shortage prior to Obamacare. The New York Times announced this shortage is “likely to worsen” under the president’s health care law. The Association of Medical Colleges is projecting a 10-15 percent reduction in physicians by 2015 alone.

With fewer jobs, higher prices, and a smaller pool of doctors to go around, it remains unclear exactly how Obamacare will make health care more accessible or “affordable.”

More

 

[daveza]

4 more years - suck it up Republicans... and grow up at the same time.

 

[w1z4rd]

4 more years - suck it up Republicans... and grow up at the same time.

 

[supersunbird]

4 more years - suck it up Republicans... and grow up at the same time.

Yep, and they deserve all they get, cause there is no way GW Bush should have gotten 2 terms

 

[daveza]

And the conservative Reps and the 'less conservative' factions are already starting to attack each other.

If it continues like this the Dems will be a shoe-in at the next elections.

 

[zippy]

Asses?

You mean Obama and his crowd for forcing Obamacare on America. Yeah I'm with you on that.
LOL Ghoti, it's called spreading the wealth. Otherwise known as socialism.

That's what you get for electing a (cult) personality, and not a president. You get the government you deserve.

Force? Voters have had 2 chances to reject Obama. Nobody has forced anything on anyone. It's democracy. It's the system they want. Deal with it.

 

[Devill]

So fastfood prices will go up? Good.

 

[SilverNodashi]

Obama should come and run South Africa....

 

[alloytoo]

FUD

Universal health care systems offer better results Dollar for dollar and ultimately better quality of life.

 

[killadoob]

Universal health care systems offer better results Dollar for dollar and ultimately better quality of life.

Bettery quality of life would be forcing the fast foods companies to regulate their food so you avoid having 2/3's of american being a bunch of fat asses.
Ghoti may disagree because he is more than likely a fat ass but it's causing huge issues for america.

Entroduce heavy smoking rules, get the younger generation off smokes. Sometimes prevention is better than cure.

 

[empirex]

Force? Voters have had 2 chances to reject Obama. Nobody has forced anything on anyone. It's democracy. It's the system they want. Deal with it.

Wrong. It's a Constitutional Republic; different from Democracy. Look it up.
So yes, it is being forced on 49% of the population.

 

[empirex]

Universal health care systems offer better results Dollar for dollar and ultimately better quality of life.

Did you look at those taxes I listed earlier?

So I guess that means you're looking forward to our very own National Health Insurance?

 

[alloytoo]

Bettery quality of life would be forcing the fast foods companies to regulate their food so you avoid having 2/3's of american being a bunch of fat asses.

Many countries are investigating regulating the location and marketing of fast food (amongst other things). Personally I think awareness and education about healthy eating habits are more effective tools.

 

[alloytoo]

Did you look at those taxes I listed earlier?

Why? It's highly unlikely I'll be paying them. Will you be paying them?

So I guess that means you're looking forward to our very own National Health Insurance?

I already enjoy Universal health care, paid for by my taxes, and I'm relatively happy about the allocation of the spend.

South African state health care is however an abject disaster.

 

[empirex]

Why? It's highly unlikely I'll be paying them. Will you be paying them?

:wtf:

You said:
"Universal health care systems offer better results Dollar for dollar and ultimately better quality of life."

I listed the many new taxes that will be forced upon the citizens of America even those who don't want them.
A better quality of life, no, many businesses will go under, people's wages will decrease as we already see.

I already enjoy Universal health care, paid for by my taxes, and I'm relatively happy about the allocation of the spend.

South African state health care is however an abject disaster.

The Tea-Party Conservative types get it embarrassingly wrong when they call it a “government takeover of health care.” Likewise, Progressive Obama-supporters are deluded in accepting it as the most sweeping healthcare reform since Medicare. (Side note: I wish the word ‘sweeping’ could be retired from politics until it actually means -sweeping.)

Here’s why. The PPACA does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry. This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into a acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a restriction, including laws that exist and ones to come.

How? By doing the same thing energy and telecom companies did after they were deregulated in 1996, and that banks did after they were summarily deregulated (after moving that way for decades) in 1999. They are merging, consolidating, eliminating competitors, and controlling their domain. They are manufacturing power.

Investment bankers are roaming the world to exploit this hot new opportunity. That’s one reason insurance companies don’t even call themselves that anymore. Now, they are ‘managed health care’ companies. Call yourself a managed health care company, and you can buy everything from other insurance companies to hospitals to clinics to doctors. The more consolidation, the more fees bankers rake in, and the more premiums and medical reimbursements and health care procedures, each company can control.

The result of 1996 energy deregulation was a glut of crime-spawned bankruptcies like Enron. Likewise WorldCom led a pack of telecom degenerates in the production of tens of billions of dollars worth of accounting fraud. The final repeal of Glass-Steagall ignited a merge-fest of investment and commercial banks, their linkages ensuring that taxpayers, whose deposits have been protected since the New Deal, provide a safety-net upon which they can mint toxic assets loosely based on over-leveraged home mortgages, and engage in risky, speculative activity; big banks don’t go bankrupt when they fabricate values or lose big on stupid bets, they get federally subsidized in all sorts of ways.

You know who else is similarly too big to fail? The insurance industry. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer covers 50% of the insurable population in over 30 states. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, covers 100 million people through a constellation of 38 sub-companies. They, and other insurance companies are growing in breadth. When companies consolidate, the result is less transparency, less competition, and more possibility for fraud and shady behavior. Every. Single. Time.

Obamacare and Accounting Fraud

By January 2014, the PPACA will require insurance companies to list their prices on competitive exchanges. In Obama-theory, this is supposed to reduce premiums via competition. But what if, say, only three companies control nearly all of the premiums? Consider the fact that it costs the same $3 to extract your money from a Chase, Bank of America or Citigroup ATM (if you don’t get it directly from the firm you bank at.) They constitute a monopoly that defies anti-trust inspection (thank you, Department of Justice.) What incentive would any of them have to charge less? None. That’s why they don’t.

Managed Health Care companies don’t just administer private, but government health insurance policies as well. The http://www.healthcare.gov website says that under the PPACA, the life of the Medicare Trust Fund will be extended to 2024 as a result of reducing waste, fraud, abuse, and slowing cost growth. President Obama promised to reduce Medicare fraud 50% by 2012 according to the site – but if he did, he forgot to mention it during the campaign period.

To supposedly combat price hikes, the PPACA calls for a new Rate Review program, wherein insurance companies must justify premium hikes of more than 10% to a state or federal review program. Given that banks aren’t supposed to hold more than 10% of the nation’s deposits in any one institution, and three do, this isn’t a comforting constraint.

While it is positive that the PPACA requires coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and prohibits lifetime caps, it can’t control what people pay for insurance, because it doesn’t limit actual premiums, which have risen 13% on average since the Act was passed.

The medical cost ratio limitation the PPACA instills; that 80% of premiums must be used for medical care in the case of individuals and small groups, and 85% in the case of large groups) to supposedly ensure companies operate on a more efficient premium in vs. premium out basis, is a joke. Its punch line is accounting manipulation. Call everything a medical cost; even buying another company, and the ratio is meaningless.

...

Doctors as profit centers

Not just patients, but physicians have been bled steadily from the current state of insurance company controlled health care through diminishing insurance reimbursements, electronic medical records mandates whereby they spend as much time complying with Kafkaesque controls over their decisions on performing surgeries and providing care, and debt. New doctors are graduating with an average of $250,000 in debt, which, combined with diminishing disbursement and soaring costs, will keep many, underwater. Forever.

According to Dr. Michael H. Heggeness, President of the North American Spine Society, a group of 6500 global spinal and orthopedic surgeons (at which I delivered a speech last month), “The last people, that most of the population feels sorry for are doctors, yet they are in an economic crisis of their own. In 2002, 80% were in private practice, now 70% are in hospitals because they can’t afford to make a private practice work.”

Meanwhile the more hospitals are viewed as profit centers, the more their Chairmen will cut costs to maximize returns, and not care quality. They will seeks ways to sell underperforming assets, programs or services and reduce the number of nonessential employees, burdening those that remain. No doubt the private equity community will be getting more into this game, as insurance companies buy more hospitals, doctors, clinics, and perhaps drug companies, or vice versa, and ‘restructuring’ accelerates.

And if insurance companies can manage doctors directly, they can control not just costs, but treatment – our treatment. It’s not an imaginary government takeover anyone should fear; but a very real, here-and-now insurance company takeover, to which no one in Washington is paying attention.

More

 

[w1z4rd]

Bettery quality of life would be forcing the fast foods companies to regulate their food so you avoid having 2/3's of american being a bunch of fat asses.
Ghoti may disagree because he is more than likely a fat ass but it's causing huge issues for america.

Entroduce heavy smoking rules, get the younger generation off smokes. Sometimes prevention is better than cure.

I know that healthcare is not just about fat people. Its mostly for people too old to work and too young to work. ... But yeah, call them lazy fat asses or whatever else you want. You dont see me complaining about your drug use.

 

[TheMightyQuin]

I bet there are a bunch of Americans on some forum somewhere involved in heated debate and discourse re. our country, its government and its failures...

 

[alloytoo]

:wtf:

You said:
"Universal health care systems offer better results Dollar for dollar and ultimately better quality of life."

I listed the many new taxes that will be forced upon the citizens of America even those who don't want them.

:wtf:

What has the quality of spend got to do with the funding model?

A better quality of life, no, many businesses will go under, people's wages will decrease as we already see.

I think you're confusing the facts with FUD.

Fact:
Countries with the highest quality of life tend to have UHC, America is the exception, and there are many higher ranked nations with some form of UHC.

FUD:
Obamacare will lead to the economic collapse of the USA.

The FUD seems dubious at best.

 

[empirex]

:wtf:

What has the quality of spend got to do with the funding model?

Everything.
You say a government healthcare system will result in a "better quality of life".
I'm sure many will differ when their paycheques start decreasing in amount and many even start losing their jobs.

I think you're confusing the facts with FUD.

Fact:
Countries with the highest quality of life tend to have UHC, America is the exception, and there are many higher ranked nations with some form of UHC.

FUD:
Obamacare will lead to the economic collapse of the USA.

The FUD seems dubious at best.

Economic collapse of the USA, no one said anything of the sort.

Monopoly on healthcare.
Government enforced (restricted) healthcare.
Monopoly on pricing.

Sounds peachy.

But I guess time will tell.