The restaurant association has signed on with Stop the HIT, a coalition of more than 30 organizations, including some heavy hitters like the NFIB and the US Chamber of Commerce, formed to repeal a tax on insurance companies called for by the ACA. The restaurant owners and other businesses fear that the tax—expected to raise some $87 billion over ten years to pay for the subsidies for the uninsured—will be passed on to them in the form of higher premiums for their workers. A hidden tax, they call it. So far, they’ve got more than 200 members of Congress to co-sponsor a bill that would repeal the tax. The press hs overlooked the ramifications of this.
As CJR reported last May, the group is also active in local communities, where it uses the local press to help spread its message to businesses in small towns across the country. That effort continues.
If the tax is repealed it could mean diminished subsidies for the uninsured—one of the pillars of the ACA. For instance, consider a family of four. Obamacare currently will help them—at least to some extent—if their income is 400 percent or less of the poverty level, or about $92,000. If this tax is repealed, help might instead be limited to 300 percent of the poverty level, or about $69,000 for a family of four.
Since so many restaurant workers are without health insurance coverage, this Papa John’s flap touches on their well-being in many ways. Schnatter talks about cuts in wages and hours. But repealing the tax and potentially threatening Obamacare subsides meant to help such employees get health insurance—that matters too.
Related reading:
How an anti-tax HIT squad employs the press
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I hope we will get to hear more about how the American system of employer-provided health insurance has already contributed to several decades of reduced wages for workers. The concept is not easy to understand at first but this article explains it well:
"In effect, then, employers and the insurance industry jointly had given the providers of health care a first claim on the paychecks of employed Americans who, as noted, generally remained unaware of that claim. While the average total compensation of American employees rose during the 1980s, their average take-home pay languished. The health sector absorbed a large share of the difference." From Uwe E. Reinhardt, The Predictable Managed Care Kvetch on the Rocky Road from Adolescence to Adulthood (http://goo.gl/D674g)
#1 Posted by MB, CJR on Tue 20 Nov 2012 at 02:45 PM
If you're not bright enough to work for anywhere but a restaurant or pizza place, you deserve to be poor and have no health care. Get a real job.
#2 Posted by Chandler, CJR on Tue 20 Nov 2012 at 08:03 PM
Lieberman's entirely off base when she thinks it's the job of the press to defend Obamacare and the policy choices that it comprises. If she wants to advocate for her political opinions, she ought to take a job at a political opinion magazine. Right now, though, it's not her job or the press's job to turn the reporting of news into "context" for her preferences.
#3 Posted by Tom T. , CJR on Tue 20 Nov 2012 at 09:54 PM
It is entirely the job of the press to provide context for understanding policy decisions and their implications for people. That is not advocacy; that is real journalism. The type of he said she said reporting that you seem to be advocating for is exactly the type of vapid "reporting" that is turning journalism into entertainment and that fails to create an informed public that can understand and evaluate policy issues that have real impacts on their lives.
#4 Posted by Kirsten, CJR on Wed 21 Nov 2012 at 10:42 AM
Does anyone take note that the BULK of restaurants mentioned are are HUGE contributors to the declining health of the American public?
Sure they are afraid of having to pay for the ravages of Fatty foods laden with High Fructose corn syrup. That's the garbage that's blowing the roof off healthcare costs. Stupid people eating garbage.
Do you think Mitt eats Papa-John's pizzas or buys Whoppers? No, he's on a vegan diet. (mormans) The rich folks know, they may be heartless demons, but they aren't stupid when it comes to nutrition.
Screw Papa-John's. Their pizzas taste crappy anyway.
#5 Posted by unkjwea, CJR on Wed 21 Nov 2012 at 12:19 PM
Yeah, regulations don't cost any jobs anywhere. That's why California, crown jewel of the blue states, has an unemployment rate and a regulatory freak's dream of administrative dirigisme, has such high job-creation and low unemployment rates compared to the nation as a whole. Oh, wait . . .
If it doesn't advance the conventional DC narrative, it doesn't merit investigation by the MSM. No narrative exists within conventional journalistic narratives to explain 'liberal' (really, just old-fashioned statist) social and economic failures. Sometimes such policies fail, but it doesn't mean anything. As for the victims of non-market failures, let them eat Chez Panisse!
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sat 24 Nov 2012 at 01:17 PM
A little garbled above, sorry. The story that is not written seldom gets criticiized in CJR, and one major story that is not written is an analysis of exactly why big, blue California is stagnating in terms of job creation, and is in a chronic state of fiscal dysfunction. By instructive contrast, big, red Texas had another outstanding year in 2011, as Matthew Iglesias concedes in today's 'Slate'. Conventional journalists appear to be either too dumb or too ideologically lazy to investigate why California's moment has passed. If the Golden State was a Republican state, and Texas was a Democratic state, does anyone out there have a doubt in the world that there would be a lot of journalistic compare-and-contrasts? California upsets the fixed narrative wherein taxes and regulations don't cost any consumer anything, let alone a job seeker. So you don't hear about the state much from Krugman and his followers, except perhaps a pathetic suggestion that more taxing authority will fix everything. The state's voters have now given their politicians that taxing authority. Can we expect tough journalism - especially from the disgraceful Los Angeles Times, repeating the NY Times performance as NYC slid into bankruptcy back in the day - as to the underlying causes of California's under-achieving?
#7 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 26 Nov 2012 at 12:30 PM
@Chandler - So we can safely assume that you have never once eaten at a restaurant or a pizza place? If everyone took your advice and got a 'real' job the restaurants would all close down. Every job is worthy of respect, not just those reserved for white upper-middle-class America.
#8 Posted by Gela, CJR on Tue 27 Nov 2012 at 03:21 PM
Guys, beyond providing "context" it might help if the media reported the facts accurately. What everyone missed is that Schnatter actually NEVER SAID what he's being skewered for saying - including in this piece.
http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/phlog/archive/2012/11/27/this-meme-is-a-lie-redeeming-papa-john-s.aspx
#9 Posted by SI Rosenbaum, CJR on Tue 27 Nov 2012 at 06:28 PM