Jacksonville businessman to speak in front of President on healthcare reform

A small business owner from Swansboro is in Washington Thursday for an audience with President Barack Obama to speak about the potential dangers healthcare reform poses to small businesses.

Rod Martin, franchise owner of almost 30 Burger Kings in eastern North Carolina, including three in Jacksonville and one in Swansboro, was invited by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to participate in a forum with the president to discuss how healthcare reform could affect small businesses.

“The chamber’s been a leading advocate in supporting healthcare reform,” said J.P. Fielder, spokesman for the U.S. Chamber. “We recognize the increasing burden that healthcare is putting on small businesses, and we believe that congress should enhance a healthcare reform that drives down the cost and improves the healthcare of small businesses.”

Burger King franchisees have self-funded insurance programs, and Martin said if several aspects of the proposed health care reform bill go into effect it could put him — and others like him — out of business.

One of Martin’s biggest concerns is the healthcare reform bills’ employer mandate portion, which would require employers to provide health insurance benefits to their employees or pay higher wages or pay the government so that it can pay for benefits for the employees.

“The employer mandate would put us out of business probably within a year,” Martin said. “What would be even worse is if we’re mandated to provide health insurance to all our employees — we’d be insolvent within a month.”

Through his restaurants, Martin currently provides health insurance to personnel who are full-time salaried management.

“We pay a majority of that insurance, and they pay part of it,” he said. “If we were to fall under the house bill where we would be paying 8 percent of our payroll if we didn’t provide insurance for everybody, that would be an amount equal or exceeding that profit we made in 2008.”

The association plan that Martin offers management personnel costs about $5,000 per employee, which he said is less expensive than what is available on the open market. About 150 employees are on the program and many of the other employees are covered under a family member’s plan.

“If we have to pay that for all our hourly and part-time people that would far exceed any ability we have to pay,” he said.

Martin said his business has a small profit margin.

“It’s different than say an IBM or General Electric where each one of their employees brings in a lot more revenue than each one of ours,” he said. “Generally our type of business will make about a 5-percent profit out of each dollar it takes.”

In the past several years, Martin said the profit margin has dropped even lower to about half of what it usually is. That profit, he said, then goes to pay income taxes and invest in equipment or remodels.

Fielder said while the chamber supports the idea of healthcare reform, there are some aspects, such as the employer mandate, that the organization does not support.

Martin said he’s headed up to Washington “for survival” and that he hopes he is able to provide the president and others with a better understanding of how the proposed healthcare reform bills may affect small businesses.

“Some of the proposals that we’ve seen coming out of the committee would certainly put us out of business and businesses similar to ours,” he said. “We don’t know if they know these things or not. If you take it for granted that they do know and they don’t, then you’ve lost your opportunity.”

Martin said he fears once healthcare reform is signed into law, there’s no going back.

“Whatever they do is the way we go to the future, so we’ve got one chance to hopefully make sure we survive,” he said.

Contact Molly DeWitt at 910-219-8455 or mdewitt@freedomenc.com.