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Popeyes becomes just the latest restaurant chain to be confused by Obamacare

Remember not too terribly long ago when restaurant chains such as Olive Garden were supposedly "experimenting" (threatening) with decreasing employees' work-hours so that they didn't meet the full-time worker criteria which would have then required the restaurants to provide these employees with health insurance via Obamacare? Those were the days, right?

I'm really starting to wonder how many of these restaurant CEOs have even read the Cliff Notes version of Obamacare.

Ralph Bower, president of the fast-food chain Popeyes, let his Obamacare fears be known recently, when he told The Huffington Post the following:

"Our fear is that some of our employees that are full-time employees will cut back on their hours so that they won't be subject to [the mandate]. My understanding is that if you're working part-time, then you're not mandated to buy the insurance. ... If you're not a full-time employee, then you don't fall under the mandate."

It seems that Mr. Bower here is confused about the mandate (what else is new). While Olive Garden and other such restaurants talked about decreasing employees' hours so they didn't have to provide these workers with healthcare via the mandate, Mr. Bower basically said he fears workers will decrease their own hours, so they don't have to purchase health insurance, even though the mandate is for everybody to acquire health insurance in one manner or another.

To his credit (sort of), Bower later corrected himself and said this:

"I was mistaken in my earlier statement that only full-time employees would be subject to the mandate. In fact, everyone is required to have health care. The company would be cautious about doing anything that would cause our full-time employees to cut back their hours, but we will not know until 2014 if anything in the law would make that happen."

Alright, so I won't give Bower a whole lot of credit here, due to the fact he still seems perplexed on the matter. While he correctly stated that everyone will be required to have healthcare, he seemed uncertain on whether or not the actual bill will cause full-time employees to cut back on their hours, which he had stated in his previous comment, and that comment was anything but accurate.

In response to Mr. Bower's odd statements, Larry Levitt - senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation - said that the Popeyes president "seems quite confused" and added the following:

"There's no difference between working full-time or part-time in terms of how the individual mandate works. I can't see any advantage from a health insurance perspective of someone working part-time."

To Mr. Bower's credit (I actually mean it this time), he did go on to state that he doesn't intend on cutting employees' hours to avoid providing them with healthcare via the mandate.

I'm now beginning to see a glaring flaw in Obamacare. It should have mandated something else. It should have mandated the heads of restaurant chains to take a beginner's course in Obamacare (Obamacare 101). Hopefully these individuals (and others) become much more educated on the law, which will be fully implemented in approximately nine months.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/popeyes-obamacare_n_2978850.html

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