Obamacare and Restaurant Workers May Finally Be Getting Along
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 14:38:23 PDT
When it comes to the relationship between the restaurant industry and the Affordable Care Act, the flavor profile (as the epicurean might say) has been decidedly bitter, so it’s nice to come across a bit of a sweet note.
As the industry's argument goes, with the very thin margins restaurants operate on, being required to cover employees' health care would wreck their businesses. But in Washington, D.C., Alisa Kleinmann—a 33-year-old mother of two, a former meeting planner and private chef, and the founder and CEO of the hospitality trade organization Industree—may have found a solution to this very personal problem. Her 35-year-old husband is a bartender at D.C. hot spot Graffiato—and he’s never had health insurance.
“I just kept thinking, something has to change,” Kleinmann told the Washington Post. “Something has to get better.”
Rather than wait around for a visit from the health insurance fairy, however, the entrepreneurial Kleinmann took matters into her own hands. While the state and federal governments run their own public health care exchanges to help people compare plans and enroll for health insurance in a competitive setting, private health care exchanges have been established by businesses to provide a similar marketplace for their employees. Working with M&T Insurance Agency and Liazon, which operates a number of these private health insurance exchanges, Kleinmann built what may well be the first insurance exchange designed specifically for the restaurant industry, becoming a licensed insurance broker herself so she could oversee the process.
This week Kleinmann debuted Industree Exchange, which is set up for Washington, D.C.–area restaurants with 100 or more employees. Owners of such establishments face a Jan. 1, 2015, deadline to offer full-time workers coverage under the health care law, while restaurants with 50–99 workers have until the start of 2016 to comply.
“Every single option has been designed, negotiated and built specifically for the demographics of the restaurant industry,” Kleinmann told the Post. “They keep you in compliance with Obamacare, and they’re completely affordable.”
As many as 20 full-coverage options provided by big-name insurers such as United Healthcare, Aetna, and Cigna are available, while there are a number of “skinny plans” to choose from as well; these provide minimum ACA coverage for $61 to $91 per month. The selection of bare-bones plans no doubt reflects the preponderance of “young invincibles” working in the industry—the 20-somethings that health care reform advocates have been trying desperately to convince to pay something, anything, for some form of coverage. A white paper out of Georgetown found that 43 percent of the U.S. restaurant workforce is under the age of 26.
Already, some D.C.-area restaurateurs are clamoring to sign up for the plans.
“When Obamacare was passed, we became very concerned about how we were going to pay for coverage for our employees,” Frank T. Shull, a partner and chief operating officer at RW Restaurant Group, told the Post. Shull’s company operates seven restaurants and has 250 full-time employees. At $400 per month per employee, the company was looking at a $100,000 monthly bill to extend coverage to full-timers under its current health plan. With Industree Exchange, it can offer basic insurance for a quarter of that.
“We want our employees to have health-care, but it had to be affordable,” Shull told the Post. “We have seven restaurants, but we’re not a big company like IBM.”
Like I said, it’s sure nice to hear that someone, somewhere, is working to provide better coverage under the new health care law to restaurant workers, because on the whole, the industry has been doing pretty much everything it can to shirk its responsibility. We’re talking about more than just that lame, politically motivated publicity stunt by Papa John’s CEO (and big Mitt Romney supporter) John Schnatter during the last presidential campaign: Schnatter claimed Obamacare would force the chain to raise the price of its pizzas. (Heaven forbid!)
Yes, as the industry argues, its workers may be younger, be more transient, and work more variable hours than those of other sectors, but if, for example, 43 percent are under the age of 26, that leaves 57 percent who aren’t. The industry ranks among the worst for providing health insurance to its employees, with an estimated 80 to 90 percent of workers uninsured.
A recent report by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which advocates for better working conditions for restaurant employees, charts the campaign of ferocious opposition to health care reform launched by the National Restaurant Association (ROC-United has dubbed it “the other NRA”). After its all-out effort to defeat the law failed in 2010, the NRA pressed on, filing an amicus brief in 2012 with the Supreme Court calling on the justices to overturn the law (also failed). Now it's lobbying Congress to roll back certain key provisions. Its most notable current push is to change the law’s definition of “full-time equivalent” employee to 40 hours worked per week from the current 30—which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would cause about a million employees to lose their employer-based health coverage.
That seems to be exactly the opposite direction we should be headed.
Free Range is a biweekly column that covers the often weird and sometimes wonderful world of food industry news. From the latest hits at the drive-through to the front lines of the battle over restaurant wages, Free Range is your source for news and commentary on the latest in food. The opinions expressed are the author's own and do not reflect the views of Participant Media.
Related stories on TakePart:
• Who Ordered ‘Health and Wellness’ for Dinner?
• OK, We All Know Tipping in Restaurants Is Ridiculous—Right?
• Is Restaurant Tipping the Worst?
• Does Obamacare Really Need to Result in Bigger Restaurant Bills?
Original article from TakePart
