Papa John's: We have to raise prices under Obamacare

The pizza world is in an uproar over the Affordable Care Act and the fact that employers with more than 50 employees will now pay a fee if they don't offer employees health insurance coverage. Never mind that they can also shop on the exchanges for the best deal in insurance. Or that, you know, they'll have employees who are healthy. It's a disaster that's going to make crappy pizza from Papa John's a tiny bit more expensive.

On a conference call last week, CEO and founder John Schnatter (a Mitt Romney supporter and fundraiser) said the health care law's changes ' set to go into effect in 2014 ' will result in higher costs for the company ' which they vowed to pass onto consumers
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"Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis," Schnatter said. [...]

"If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests," Schnatter vowed.

It's great that Papa John's is so concerned about their customers that they'll pass the cost of taking better care of their employees on. In case you're wondering, Papa John's isn't suffering in this recession, with revenues up in the last quarter a healthy 7.2 percent from the same period last year. They also already offer benefits to managers, drivers, store workers, and even to part-time employees, so their franchises could potentially even end up saving money by shopping on the exchanges.

This sounds a lot more like an excuse for a Romney supporter to hate on President Obama (with the added benefit of justifying price hikes on his crappy pizza) than a real business concern. The whole thing sounds like a load of pepperoni.