Denny's to Add Surcharge on Customer Bills to Pay for Obamacare
As a result of President Obama's re-election, several business have already stated they are going to have to increase prices and cut employee hours in order to pay for the president's health care plan known as Obamacare.
John Metz, a Florida restaurateur operating nearly 40 Denny's restaurants and five Hurricane Grill & Wings franchises, revealed that he plans to add a five percent surcharge to customers' bills in order to cover the cost of ObamaCare, which is scheduled to be fully implemented by January 2014.
"People are trying to find ways to avoid the penalties and to avoid having to pay for ObamaCare," Metz told FoxNews.com. "Everyone's looking for a way to not have to provide insurance for their employees. It's essentially a huge tax on all us business people."
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Metz, who is president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, is responsible for over 1,200 employees and he will also be cutting most of his current staff's hours to less than 30 hours a week – a threshold that divides full-time and part-time employees – and that is slated to take effect next month, according to Metz.
"I want to explain it to everybody, to let them know what's coming down the pike," he said. "We like to keep our employees informed."
Under the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act, business with more than 50 full-time employees will be forced to pay a penalty for every worker that is not covered by a company's insurance plan.
The penalty works out to roughly $2,000 per employee. Metz explained that he employs an average of 35 people per restaurant and, should he not comply will the law, would be required to pay roughly $75,000 for each of his restaurants.
He currently covers about 250 employees with the company insurance plan, which costs him about $6,000 per full-time employee annually.
"It's a great concept," he said. "We want to have everyone insured. The problem is, who is going to pay for it and how are we going to accomplish this?"
