The Papa State

Qual­ity Always Plays Politics.

Papa John’s CEO John Schnat­ter touched off a polit­i­cal firestorm last week by announc­ing he felt the oner­ous yoke of The Man’s oppres­sion because of an Oba­macare require­ment that his busi­ness pro­vide health care to full-​​time employees.

Schnat­ter claimed the cost of pro­vid­ing health care to his employ­ees would raise the cost of a pizza by 11–14 cents. (Forbes cal­cu­lates the PPACA-​​related nec­es­sary price increase at a nickel.) A group formed imme­di­ately after Pres­i­dent Obama’s reëlec­tion, @Reboot_USA, set up a Face­book page (now appar­ently dis­abled or deleted) and called for “Papa John’s Appre­ci­a­tion Day” for Fri­day, Novem­ber 16.

What hap­pened?

In a word, nothing.

The sug­gested Twit­ter hash­tag (i.e. sort of a sub­ject label on a Twit­ter post), #IStand­With­Pa­pa­Johns, only got used by a hand­ful of unique Twit­ter users on the appointed day, gain­ing nary a cen­ti­Bieber of Twit­ter traf­fic. The vast major­ity of tweets using the hash­tag were exco­ri­at­ing the com­pany or its owner. A Google search pro­duces no news reports on or after Friday.

No longer car­ry­ing a torch for Pres­i­dent Obama.

It appears that the attempt to gather together vil­lagers with pitch­forks and lighted torches was gen­er­ally unsuc­cess­ful. Appar­ently, the Amer­i­can peo­ple con­sider Oba­macare protests a dead letter.

What do Log­a­rchism read­ers think?

Do employ­ers (or fran­chise own­ers with over 50 employ­ees, in this case) have a respon­si­bil­ity to pro­vide health care for their full-​​time employees?

Is there a bet­ter sys­tem? What alter­na­tive would you rec­om­mend? If each indi­vid­ual is respon­si­ble for his own health care, then should we also repeal the Emer­gency Med­ical Treat­ment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), signed into law by Pres­i­dent Rea­gan in 1986? (The cost of pro­vid­ing emer­gency med­ical care to unin­sured patients is esti­mated to cost hos­pi­tals about 20 per­cent of their rev­enue annu­ally, essen­tially a 20 per­cent tax on health care costs.) Is a 0.7 per­cent tax on pizza more oner­ous than a 20 per­cent tax on health care?

Is this just more Astro­turf­ing, or do the vil­lagers’ torches illu­mi­nate a real issue?

Related arti­cles

• Libs call for boy­cott of Papa John’s as CEO antic­i­pates cut in work­ers’ hours (hot1041stl​.com)
• John Schnat­ter — @IAmPapaJohn: Greedy Bas­tard (mbca​lyn​.com)
• The Side-​​Eye: CEO Of Papa John’s Says Pizza Prices Will Hike And Employ­ees Will Get Fired Due To Pres­i­dent Obama’s Re-​​Election (bossip​.com)
• Papa John’s Pizza To Fire Work­ers Over Oba­maCares (theoba​ma​crat​.com)
• Break­ing Down Centi-​​Millionaire ‘Papa’ John Schnatter’s Oba­macare Math (forbes​.com)
• CEO of Papa John’s says employ­ees’ hours will likely be cut due to Oba­maCare costs (foxnews​.com)
• Con­ser­v­a­tives Launch Papa John’s Appre­ci­a­tion Day (askmar​ion​.word​press​.com)
• Papa John’s bad Oba­macare math (salon​.com)