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In reply to the discussion: From an Ex CEO: Why John Schnatter's comments about a 20 cents add on are laughable. [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)is that prior to the ACA,he was relying on socialized medicine to pay for the health care needs of his employees.
Here is how that works:
1. Papa John's does not pay his employees enough to permit them to buy their own health insurance.
2. Most of Papa John's employees probably don't have insurance and go to the doctor only if it won't cost much or if there is an emergency.
3. When one of Papa John's employees has an emergency, let's say discovers a cancer or has a bad fall, that employee has to go to the emergency room for "free" meaning that other hospital patients pay for Papa John's employee's hospital visit, or
4. If a Papa John's employee develops an expensive, chronic condition, say cancer, they have to try to qualify for Medicaid.
Either way, the employee ends up being subsidized either directly by the government through Medicaid or indirectly by mooching off everybody else in society who pays for health insurance.
So, Papa John has been externalizing his employees' health care costs all these years.
Externalizing your costs is just a sneaky word for socialism -- for shifting costs your business or you incur onto the society around you.
And when you do that, even if the costs are shifted from one person to another, they eventually end up being picked up by the government in the form of tax losses or direct payments or indirect payments (inflated hospital Medicare and Medicaid bills for Medicare and Medicaid eligible patients for example or even direct government grants to health care providers to cover losses from "free" care).
Which would be OK except that we are all helping to pay for the care of Papa John's employees -- and they don't even get the care they need.
So Papa John's statements about the cost of health care insurance for his employees just shows that he is a socialist at heart. He firmly believes in externalizing his costs and claiming what is left is his profits.