Pappa John - Who Is He Kidding?

I feel compelled to post something about Papa John's Pizza. His announced plan to cut back employee hours because of ObamaCare is so incredibly disingenuous. He claims that the Affordable Care Act, when fully implemented, will drive his health care costs so high that he will be forced to take drastic steps to stay in business. Really? He says this with a straight face even though health care costs have gone up between 10 and 15% per year for the last decade without ObamaCare.

Increased health care costs are not the result of the Affordable Care Act. ACA is the solution...or one of them. When everyone has health insurance, total health care costs will come down for a variety of reasons having to do with economic law.

Meanwhile Papa John is making it sound like he's having to lay people off because his business is suffering. Nothing could be further from the truth. His total employee hours - the number of hours required to be worked to make and deliver pizzas at his current volume will not go down. What he is going to do is cut the hours back for his full time employees and replace those hours with part time employees so that he no longer has to provide benefits for full time workers. This effectively shifts the cost of health care for his employees onto the rest of us. Papa John is not a great American. He is a free-loader.


He could raise the cost of his pizzas between 10 and 14 cents per pie. He said this to his shareholders just a few weeks ago. This is what he would do if the cost of tomato sauce or pepperoni went up. This is what businesses do with their costs. They pass them on to their customers. We all know and expect it.

By changing the game so he no longer has to pay health care costs, he is not passing them through, but just shifting them to the government - the same government that he would like to be smaller and less involved. The difference - the amount that he would have, in fact the amount that he already is, paying for full time employees, goes directly into Papa John's pocket. (or the pockets of his franchise holders)

He has said publicly that his move is not political and that he sees universal health care coverage as a good thing. Apparently he only thinks it's good so long as he doesn't have to pay his share.

Papa John is kind of a dick.

I don't care that much for his pizza either.