Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
A Night At The Movies: Higher Costs, Less Hours For Employees
A Night At The Movies: Higher Costs, Less Hours For Employees
Jan 26, 2026 10:13 AM

If your next date night costs you more, you can thank Obamacare. Regal Entertainment Group, the country’s largest movie theater chain, has announced that it is cutting employee hours due to Obamacare related costs.

One Regal theater manager told the move has sparked a wave of resignations from full-time managers who have seen their hours cut by 25 percent or more.

“In the last couple weeks, managers have been quitting on a daily basis from various locations to try and find full-time work,” said the manager, who asked not to be named. “Regal up until now has never restricted anyone to anything below 40 hours.”

Restaurants such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden are also trying to figure out ways to meet health-care costs, and that typically means cutting employee hours so that the employees do not meet full-time status, and thus do not require health care coverage. This “under-employment” is growing.

So-called “underemployment” is already a widespread problem in the weak economy, with many workers unable to get the hours they need to get by. According to an analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the percentage of workers clocking in on a part-time basis grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2011. Only 28 percent panies that offer health benefits make them available to part-time employees, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

One website, Obamacarefacts, states that Obamacare will create jobs:

Small businesses have increasingly stopped providing health benefits to their employees over the past decade due to the ever rising cost of health care premiums. The rising costs don’t effect larger firms hiring processes. ObamaCare helps to regulate insurance making it more affordable to small businesses increasing job retention rate and making those jobs more attractive.

While jobs may be available, increasingly they will e with health-care benefits. According to Ed Haislmaier, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, “If you want to have reduced work, lower wages and economic stagnation, this is a great way to do it.” Further, Haislmaier points out that a majority of states have opted out of – at least for now – health care “exchanges” that are part of Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The costs for the states to set these exchanges up are high, impacting state budgets and these states consider the government plan to risky.

Obamacare is costing people money in many ways: lower salaries, higher consumer costs and taxes, and less consumer spending. Rather than dinner out and a movie, more Americans may be choosing dinner at home and a television program.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Samuel Gregg’s New Book: Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy
Over at Econlog, one of the best economics blogs around, Arnold Kling has been reading Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg’s latest and recently released book, Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (Edward Elgar, 2010). Kling underlines how Röpke used ethical analysis to distinguish between the three ways of allocating resources: altruism, coercion, and what Röpke called “the business principle.” For Kling’s take on this subject, see Econlog. The book is available on the Elgar site and Amazon. ...
Top 10 Reasons to Rely on Private Sector Markets
This week’s Acton Commentary from Baylor University economics professor John Pisciotta: Americans have less confidence and trust in government today than at any time since the 1950s. This is the conclusion of the Pew Research Center survey released in mid-April. Just 22 percent expressed trust in government to deliver effective policies almost always or most of the time. With the robust expansion of the economic role of the federal government under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the Pew poll...
Free Range Markets
Here is an question: Where do a lot of socially liberal, anti-capitalists,left-leaning, organic, environmentalist, vegan, social democrat types who enthusiastically support government regulation and nationalized health care go to find a sense munity? Answer: Free Markets To be more precise: Farmer’s Markets. Spring is in the air and so I headed off to the first official day of the farmer’s market in Grand Rapids on Saturday. As you can imagine farmer’s markets not only have an abundant supply of fresh...
Will Tea Parties Awaken America’s Moral Culture?
This mentary developed out of my remarks at Acton on Tap. My years of studying and reading about the civil rights movement at Ole Miss and seminary aided in the writing of this piece: Will Tea Parties Awaken America’s Moral Culture? Tea parties are changing the face of political participation, but critics of the tea party movement point to these grassroots upstarts as “extreme,” “angry,” “racist” and even “seditious.” Yet The Christian Science Monitor reported that tea party rallies are...
Prophet Jim Wallis Explains the Doctrine of Coercive Repentance
In a new column on Sojourners, Prophet Jim Wallis reveals that Wall Street financiers ing to him for confession, sometimes skulking along darkened streets to hide their shame: e like Nicodemus – a religious leader who came to talk to Jesus in private – at night. Many have felt remorseful about what happened on Wall Street and how it has hurt so many people. They describe the behavior in their profession with words such as “greedy,” “risky,” or “reckless.” These...
Editorial: Where’s the morality?
Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg is quoted in yesterday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial on Goldman Sachs: The most shocking moment in Tuesday’s Senate hearing on Goldman Sachs wasn’t Sen. Carl Levin’s repeated use of the big investment house’s scatological description of its own dubious offerings. No, it was when one of Goldman’s high cluckety-clucks actually said that it has no ethical responsibility to tell clients that it is betting against the same investments it mends. That really is (expletive deleted). Samuel...
Remembering Ernie Harwell
We of course have a ton of content in our blog archives at the Acton Institute. Radio legend and former Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell passed away yesterday. The infectious joy and moral quality he exuded was so grand it is worth pointing you to a post I wrote in 2008. It has a good deal of information on Harwell, including these lines: Harwell has many thrilling encounters and prestigious awards in his long life, but his most important encounter...
Re: Die Hard — The Welfare State
News reports today on the Greek debt crisis are packed with scary terms like “implosion” and “financial doomsday” and “ebola” and “contagion.” The anxiety has ratcheted up considerably this week, and not just for EU heads of state but also for President Obama. He should be worried. As I pointed out in a previous post, “Die Hard — The Welfare State,” the United States awaits its own day of reckoning for the sins of mounting government debt, a bloated public...
The Birth of Freedom Documentary Airs Sunday on Detroit Public TV
Acton Media’s second documentary makes its public television debut Sunday, May 2, with a 3-4 p.m. airing on Detroit Public Television (HD channel 56.1). The film trailer is here. Update: Michigan PBS stations WCMU and WFUM have scheduled the documentary for broadcast on Thursday, June 17, from 10-11 p.m. ...
Last Exit To Utopia
U·to·pi·a [yoo-toh-pee-uh]- noun – an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. The word was first used in the book Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More. The opposite of dystopia. ORIGIN based on Greek ou not + tóp(os) a place Last Exit to Utopia by Jean-François Revel Note, dear reader, the origin of the term “utopia”: the Greek root indicates that utopia is, literally, nowhere. It is not a place. It does not exist. Sir Thomas...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved