Suck it, Papa John's: 54% of voters would pay more for restaurant meals to insure workers

Public Policy Polling's food poll has a lot of entertainment value'pancakes beat french toast, with waffles bringing up the rear, while a narrow plurality of Republicans consider the Olive Garden to be "'a quality source of authentic ethnic food"'but there's one really important question:

54% of voters say that they'd be willing to pay more for their restaurant meals to help employees have health insurance to 30% who say they would not. Democrats (72/19) are overwhelmingly willing to pay more for that purpose, but Republicans by a narrow margin (41/38) as well.

That's been one of the big threats about what will happen as restaurants have to insure more of their workers under Obamacare. Papa John's CEO John Schnatter has been particularly aggressive with those threats, insisting that insuring workers would mean both raising prices and cutting worker hours. But despite his inflated estimates of how big those price increases would be, and despite similar fearmongering from owners of Wendy's, Taco Bell, Denny's, and Applebee's franchises, apparently a majority of people still look at restaurant prices and think "yeah, I'd pay the extra few cents on a pizza or a burger to get health care for the workers who cooked and served my meal." Looks like people are just a little better than those restaurant owners were banking on when they tried to pit customers against low-wage workers.