Major food chains fight 'Obamacare' reforms (SLIDESHOW)

theGRIO REPORT - Franchise owners of restaurants like Applebee's and Olive Garden are promising to take drastic measures to avoid the cost of Obamacare, including cutting employees' hours to part-time...

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Now that President Barack Obama has secured a second term in office, multiple food chain owners are pushing back against Obamacare.

Franchise owners of restaurants like Red Lobster and Olive Garden have promised to take drastic measures to ensure their properties avoid the costs that come along with providing insurance for their employees.

Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, requires businesses with more than 50 employees to provide an approved health insurance plan for each of them. If they don’t, businesses will be penalized $2,000 for each full-time worker over 30 employees.

Food chains employ more than 4 million full and part-time workers who make an average of $12,000 a year, and many of them do not fund health care for a majority of these workers.

Owners of these chains are now making plans to scale back their number of employees and cut hours to dodge Obamacare penalties.

Florida businessman John Metz, whose company, RREMC Restaurants, owns a number of Denny’s and Dairy Queen locations, told the Huffington Post that this is “the only alternative” because the cost of providing insurance is too high.

We’ve created a slideshow of franchise owners who have promised to make changes in light of Obamacare.

Click through the images above to see which food chains are cutting employee hours and more.

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