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
Jun 18, 2026 7:35 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
Naturalizing Shalom: When ‘Justice’ Becomes an Idol
A new generation of evangelicals is beginning to re-think and re-examine the ways they have typically (not) engaged culture, with theological concepts like Abraham mon graceleading many to stretch beyond their more dispensationalist dispositions. Over at Comment, James K.A. Smith offers some helpful warnings for the movement, noting that amid our “newfound appreciation for justice and shalom,” we should remain wary of getting too carried away with our earthly-mindedness.“By unleashing a new interest and investment in ‘this-worldly’ justice,” Smith argues,...
Faith In The Free Market
Wes Selke thought he might be called to seminary. Instead, he wound up in business school. That doesn’t mean he’s any less filled with a sense of mission and purpose. An article in Christianity Today has Selke discussing his desire as a Christian to invest in social entrepreneurship and how his faith and his work life intertwine. As co-founder of Hub Ventures, Selke seeks to help entrepreneurs get off to a solid start through a 12-week, intensive training course. He...
‘Standing Together For Religious Freedom’
In an open letter to all Americans, religious leaders as varied as Catholic Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and Susan Taylor, the National Public Affairs Director of the Church of Scientology, have responded to the Obama administration’s “final” ruling regarding the HHS mandate that all employers carry health insurance that includes birth control, abortificients and abortion coverage. The letter, entitled “Standing Together For Religious Freedom”, acknowledges the signators have a wide range of beliefs and that many of the signators...
Final Ruling On HHS Mandate: ‘Same Old, Same Old’
On Friday, June 28, the Department of Health and Human Services offered up its final ruling on the mandate for all employers to offer insurance plans covering abortion services and abortificients. The ruling itself is over 100 pages, and will take some time to dissect. However, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty made this statement: ‘Unfortunately the final rule announced today is the same old, same old. As we said when the proposed rule was issued, this doesn’t solve the...
Hobby Lobby Gets 11th Hour Victory Against the Mandate
Hobby Lobby, the privately owned popular craft store chain that filed suit opposing the HHS mandate which forces employers to provide “preventive care” measures such as birth-control and “morning after” pills, won a significant — albeit temporary victory last week when the trial court granted a temporary restraining order against enforcement: Today, for the first time, a federal court has ordered the government not to enforce the HHS abortion-drug mandate against Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. The es just one day...
The Declaration of Independence as American Creed
The Declaration of Independence contains the clearest, most concise, and most eloquent articulation of the American creed, says David Azerrad, a political definition of man in two axioms, and three corollary propositions on government. In the course of making this argument and building their case, the founders also laid down the timeless and universal principles that were to define the new country. In that second paragraph, we find the clearest, most concise, and most eloquent articulation of the American creed....
The foundations of American independence vs. despotism
The Great Awakening (1730 – 1760) was central to America’s revolution and independence. It united the colonies and gave them a new spiritual vitality. It made churches more American and less European. These changes wedded with enlightenment thought allowed Americans to see the world with new eyes. Ties to Europe, and England especially, began to unravel. “The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background,” says historian Paul Johnson. “The essential difference between the American Revolution and the...
5 Basic Principles of Christian Stewardship
In Faithful in All God’s House: Stewardship and the Christian Life, Lester DeKoster and Gerard Berghoef explore the range and reach of Christian stewardship, emphasizing that the practice of stewardship extends far beyond the handling of our money, stretching into life and time and destiny. The practice of stewardship is “the supreme challenge of the Christian life,” they argue, and thus, we must strive to properly orient our thinking and behavior accordingly. The forms of stewardship are submitted to all...
A Job-Killing Obamacare Mandate Gets Delayed
Both the working poor and small businesses got some e, albeit temporary, news yesterday: the Treasury Department announced it is delaying what’s called the “employer mandate” under the Affordable Care Act until January of 2015. That mandate panies with more than 50 full-time employees to offer health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty. Most businesses with more than 50 employees already offer insurance, but panies and startups often cannot afford the cost. Even some supporters of Obamacare admit this mandate...
Samuel Gregg: Charles Carroll, A Tea Party Thomist
Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, discusses Founding Father Charles Carroll at Intercollegiate Review. “A Tea Party Thomist: Charles Carroll” is excerpted from Gregg’s ing book,Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case For Limited Government, A Free Economy And Human Flourishing. In the article, Gregg tells of Carroll’s reaction to thePeggy Stewart sailing into Annapolis’ harbor, sparking the controversy regarding the British right to tax the American Colonies. The political point of this exercise was to elicit the American colonists’ implicit...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved