Obamacare Storming the Castle

The White Castle, that is:

The Columbus-based family owned restaurant chain - known for serving small square hamburgers called "sliders" – says a single provision in the bill will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014.

Starting that year, the bill levies a $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

White Castle, which currently provides insurance to all of its full-time workers and picks up 70 to 89 percent of their premium costs, believes it will likely end up paying those penalties. The financial hit will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs, says company spokesman Jamie Richardson. White Castle employs more than 10,000 people nationwide, and more than 1,200 in Ohio.

The next obvious question is how much would it cost if they didn't offer ANY health care coverage but instead dumped their employees into the public option, because you can bet that's what's coming. More and more companies will find it cheaper to pay the penalties for not offering coverage rather than deal with all the Obamacare nonsense.