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 13, 2026 10:34 PM

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
A Rare Glimpse at the Underground Church in China
Last weekend was the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, an annual day to put special emphasis on praying for the persecuted Church. Remembering the persecuted church around the globe, though, should be a continual effort for all Christians. We need to continually remind ourselves that our brothers and sisters arebeaten, jailed, or even killed for their faith. One group in particular that we need to remember to pray for is the underground church in China. In this...
There’s A Promising Market For Conservative News
Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith in the studio Yesterday at The Federalist, I examined the claims of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during last week’s GOP primary debate that the “mainstream media” is dominated by “liberal bias.” While there is some truth to this claim, as I point out in my article, the data paints a plicated picture: Conservative outlets such as Fox News and (editorially) the Wall Street Journal outperform the closest left-leaning ones, CNN...
What Does the World Think of Capitalism?
What do people around the globe think of capitalism? To find out the answer the Legatum missioned YouGov to ask ten questions of populations in seven nations. First, the bad news. Contrary to overwhelming evidence, large majorities in all seven of the nations surveyed agree that the poor get poorer in capitalist economies. The survey also notes that majorities of the populations in America, Brazil, India, Thailand, and Indonesia support protectionist measures to defend their manufacturing industries from low cost...
Rubio Has A Point: Philosophy Majors Don’t Work In Philosophy
Correction: An earlier version of this post did not examine PayScale’s methodology. The three paragraphs that address it were added, and the text has been lightly edited in other places as a result. If the post now reads unevenly, that is why. Short version: I was a bit too hard on Mr. Bump due to my own lack of due diligence. Mea culpa. At last night’s fourth GOP debate on Fox Business, Florida Senator Marco Rubio lamented, “For the life...
Kuyper’s Impact on Chuck Colson
“I’ve done my best to popularize Kuyper, because that’s what’s so desperately needed in Western civilization today: a looking at all of life through God’s eyes.” –Chuck Colson Given the recent release of Abraham Kuyper’s 12-volume collection of works in public theology, it’s worth noting his influence on modern-day shapers of Christian thought and action. From Francis Schaeffer to Cornelius Van Til to Alvin Plantinga, Kuyper’s works have expanded the cultural imaginations of many. Another devotee was the late Chuck...
Even the Federal Government Doesn’t Know If Their Regulations Are Effective
Of all the executive orders issued by President Obama, one of the most important is one most people never knew existed: Executive Order 13563 – Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review . In the order, the president requires federal agencies to perform a “retrospective analysis” of existing regulations to evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness: (a) To facilitate the periodic review of existing significant regulations, agencies shall consider how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient,...
What If There Were No Prices?
I’m something of a cheapskate (or as I prefer to think of myself, prudentially frugal) and so I take special pleasure in finding a good deal. I’m also, by nature, rather grateful and so I frequently thank God for helping me to find goods and services at bargain prices. But sometimes I remember to step back and be grateful for the larger system God has created that makes such exchanges possible: the price system. As I’ve said before, a “price...
Religion & Liberty: Kitchen Redemption
Brandon Chrostowski demonstrates a cooking technique at Edwins Early in October, I took a trip to Cleveland to learn about Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute and its founder, Brandon Chrostowski. Edwins is the “teaching hospital” of restaurants. It teaches people with zero hospitality experience the basics of restaurant business through a free six month course. The one requirement to get into the program? Jail time. Chrostowski was inspired to start Edwins after his own brush with the law and a...
De-Carbonise and Destroy the Global Economy
Hoo boy…the circus ing to town. Paris is hosting the Conference of Parties (COP21) in December, that is, and the Big Top of big-government solutions to climate-change claims will, of course, include shareholder activists, many of them dressing up their progressive “sustainability” agendas with lots of churchy talk. These activists are closely linked in a broad religious and secular campaign that in fact reduces shareholder value in support of “social justice” and other such ideological abstractions. For example, the Interfaith...
Radio Free Acton: Bradley Birzer on Russell Kirk and the Genesis of American Conservatism (With Bonus Kirk Video)
This week on Radio Free Acton, we’re joined by Bradley J. Birzer, the Russell Amos Kirk Chair of American Studies and Professor of History at Hillsdale College, and the author of a new biography of the founding father of the American conservative movement, Russell Kirk. Birzer’s book,Russell Kirk: American Conservative, examines the life and thought of Kirk, the means he used to build a conservative Christian humanist movement, and examines Kirk’sinfluence on conservative leaders who followed. We at the Acton...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved