Permalink Reply by A4L on November 7, 2013 at 6:06pm

I love your parable!

And it may be.

Which is precisely why I just continue to advocate for being civil as much as possible, because it is not exercising and being loud and boisterous that always leads one to seeing, but as you said;

Clean windows!

So now I advocate for "Clean Windows!"

Permalink Reply by A4L on November 7, 2013 at 6:12pm

Maybe you're right?

Middlemen do create added costs, I get that.

But is there a way to cause things to go in a better direction through capitalism and entrepreneurial efforts?

Like, doesn't Walmart create success by offering items at a lower cost? It attracts shoppers absent of coercion and regulation.

And just like group insurance plans get better pricing than individuals why is it impossible that a capitalistic principle can not work in this scenario?

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 8, 2013 at 9:20am

did you forget already the links and stories posted about collusions between hospital corporations regarding employee wages, fraud on charges, unnecessary procedures, differing pricing depending on payment plans, buried small print that renders a so-called health insurance worthless, lack of any sort of standard in insurance plans so essentially there can be no comparison by the normal consumer in shopping for a plan...did i miss anything...

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 8, 2013 at 9:22am

Dianne Barrette also popped up on television on a CBS news report in which she lamented that her $54-per-month insurance plan had been canceled under Obamacare. But Nancy Metcalf at Consumer Reports investigated Barrette's story and found that her current policy was a "textbook example of a junk plan that isn't real health insurance at all." According to Metcalf, if Barrette had ever tried to use her insurance for anything more than a sporadic doctor's visit, "she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt."

The plan, for instance, only pays for hospitalization in cases of "complications of pregnancy." Instead, Metcalf found that Barrette could get a "silver" plan in the state insurance exchange for $165 per month that would actually cover Barrette in the case of any sort of serious or even moderate illness. Which is the very definition of insurance, isn't it?

Permalink Reply by A4L on November 9, 2013 at 10:46pm

Problem I am just getting to this. I appreciate that you have posted many things. I just can"t be on the computer consistently and read every article. Wish I could but I can't. Don't remember seeing the one you are talking about.

It sounds like you are making very good points, but I am speaking very basically in general. Wanted to know about capitalistic ideas to create a better scenario. If as you say a bunch of corrupt crony connections exist, then addressing those things sound perfectly warranted. I really do not believe this stuff all came about through republican will alone and that democrats have been actively doing all that they can to fight this stuff. It is not likely. I say that because obviously these relationships did not just start months ago, but it sounds like it has evolved through years. If the democrats have been in fact working decisively to end this stuff and been as "vocal" about these specifics as they continue to be about the other pet or core foundational causes that they rally around, please let me hear something of the bills they have introduced to corral these problems over the years.

Permalink Reply by LoveLife&Laughter on November 10, 2013 at 11:12am

It’s a classic bait and switch: luring customers with unsustainable low rates, and then blaming the White House for their chicanery.

That’s basically why we needed Obamacare to begin with.

Obamacare ‘Big lie’? Comes from insurance companies

So here’s my advice: If you’re somebody who’s smoking hot about the Big Lie of the Affordable Care Act — you know, how President Obama told everybody that if they liked their current health insurance policy they could keep it — do yourself a favor. Avoid the county fair midway.

Because if you go, you’re apt to encounter a quick-handed scoundrel running a shell game, and that boy will take your money. Doubtless Obama should have said almost everybody could keep their current plan, or that 95 percent could, but he apparently found that too, um, subtle for the campaign trail.

So now old Mitt “47 percent” Romney gets to call him a liar.

But while your attention’s fixed on the president’s “mendacity” and “paternalism,” to quote one characteristically overwrought scribe, America’s beloved health insurance industry is demonstrating exactly why we needed reform all along. Certain companies are taking advantage of the political confusion to sell people in the “individual market” far more expensive plans than they need and blame “Obamacare.”

As usual, the nation’s esteemed political media have gone along for the ride. CBS News, rapidly morphing into Fox News-lite, presented the heartbreaking tale of one Diane Barrette, a 56-year-old Floridian who got a letter from her insurance company canceling her $54 a month policy and offering a replacement for $591 a month — a lot of money to her.

CBS correspondent Jan Crawford, deemed smart enough to cover the U.S. Supreme Court, took Barrette’s story at face value. The idea that health insurance worth having could be purchased at a monthly cost of less than a steak dinner apparently failed to arouse her reporter’s curiosity.

Poor Barrette choked up telling CBS her story, leading to several appearances on Fox News itself.

Had CBS done elementary due diligence, they’d have learned why Ms. Barrette’s plan was so cheap. Reporters who did learned that among other shortcomings, it didn’t cover hospitalization. In reality, she had no health insurance at all. A serious accident or illness might have bankrupted her — precisely the kind of ripoff the Affordable Care Act makes illegal.

Also, Barrette was taking the insurance company’s word about the cost of a replacement policy. Writing for BillMoyers.com, Joshua Holland ran her numbers through Kaiser Permanente’s subsidy calculator. With assistance from Obamacare, she can have a real policy covering preventive care and hospitalization for an out-of-pocket cost of $97 monthly, or a more generous Silver-Level plan for $209.

Now she calls it “a blessing in disguise.”

In short, CBS News couldn’t have gotten the story more backward had they tried. For its part, NBC News featured Los Angeles real estate agent Deborah Cavallaro, whose similar experience led her to conclude that “there’s nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act.”

However, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik found that Cavallaro had simply failed to consult Covered California, the state’s health plan exchange. When he did so, he quickly found that “better plans than she has now are available for her to purchase today, some of them for less money.”

No doubt some among the three to five percent of Americans whose individual health care policies have been canceled are experiencing genuine sticker shock. However, nobody should take his insurance company’s word at face value without double-checking — a task admittedly made harder by healthcare.gov’s website meltdown.

See, when you read a story about a couple like Dean and Mary Lou Griffin of Chadd’s Ford, Penn., who told the Associated Press they’d expected to be able to keep the policy they bought three years ago, what reporters aren’t asking is where they’d gotten that idea.

From President Obama? Possibly.

More likely, however, from an insurance broker. See, all providers have known about new coverage standards ever since the Affordable Care Act passed in March 2010. Since then, some have clearly been “churning” the market, offering low-risk, healthy customers bargain policies they knew perfectly well would no longer pass muster come Jan. 1, 2014.

So now come the inevitable cancellation letters, and guess what? If they were lucky — and health-wise, the Griffins have been fortunate — here comes the bad news. “We’re buying insurance that we will never use and can’t possibly ever benefit from,” Dean Griffin complains. “We’re basically passing on a benefit to other people who are not otherwise able to buy basic insurance.”

Two thoughts: one, don’t get cocky, you never know.

Two, boo-hoo-hoo. You can afford it.

Meanwhile, Dylan Scott at talkingpointsmemo.com has documented companies sending “misleading letters to consumers, trying to lock them into . . . more expensive health insurance plans rather than let them shop for insurance and tax credits on the Obamacare marketplaces.” Authorities in four states have disciplined Humana affiliates for exactly that.

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 10, 2013 at 11:43am

and if you trust insurance companies..back in 2008 when hurricane ike was about 3 days away from making landfall along the gulf coast, some insurance companies sent out notices to their policyholders of home insurance in which the owners of those homes were informed that the deductible had increased to as much as 30,000 and that (surprise surprise) in some cases damage from storms was not covered...(remember katrina? the question of was it a storm or a surge that caused your home to flood ...oh well either way we don't pay...remember if fema will pay, we won't and fema won't pay if you are insured....even if insurance refuses to pay....)...oh and one little caveat.....the notices weren't legal because you have to have 30 days between the time the notice is received and the time it goes into effect but a) the homeowner has to be aware of that and b) the homeowner has to be willing to hire an attorney to fight the insurance company's refusal...

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 7, 2013 at 6:13pm

Here's the truth about Obamacare

By Sally Kohn, Special to CNN

updated 9:08 AM EST, Thu November 7, 2013

President tweaks his Obamacare promise

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Sally Kohn: Republicans are desperate to destroy Obamacare at any cost
Kohn: Stories about people supposedly harmed by the law are not always true
She says journalists are digging into allegations, helping us all sort fact from fiction
Kohn: The website still has glitches, but old-fashioned reporting is very reliable

Editor's note: Sally Kohn is a progressive activist, columnist and television commentator. Follow her on Twitter at @sallykohn.

(CNN) -- The Obamacare website might still not be working, but journalists are. All across the country, as Republicans try to highlight tragic tales of Americans losing their current health insurance and allegedly stuck with more expensive options, journalists are coming to the rescue. In case after case, journalists investigated these stories and called the policyholders and combed the insurance exchange websites to bring actual facts to bear in our public debate about Obamacare.

Here are just some of the mythical stories journalists have helped dispel — and the lessons we can learn from them about the reality of the Affordable Care Act:

Deborah Cavallaro was making the rounds on television complaining about how her current insurance plan was canceled under Obamacare. So Washington Post columnist Michael Hiltzik talked to her. Her current plan cost $293 per month but had a deductible of $5,000 per year and out-of-pocket annual limits of $8,500. Also, the current plan covered just two doctor's visits per year.

Sally Kohn

But in the California insurance exchange, which Hiltzik helped Cavallaro check, she could get a "silver" plan for $333 per month — $40 more than she's currently paying. But the new plan has only a $2,000 deductible and maximum out-of-pocket expenses at $6,350. Plus all doctor visits would be covered. Hiltzik writes, "Is that better than her current plan? Yes, by a mile."

Dianne Barrette also popped up on television on a CBS news report in which she lamented that her $54-per-month insurance plan had been canceled under Obamacare. But Nancy Metcalf at Consumer Reports investigated Barrette's story and found that her current policy was a "textbook example of a junk plan that isn't real health insurance at all." According to Metcalf, if Barrette had ever tried to use her insurance for anything more than a sporadic doctor's visit, "she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt."

The plan, for instance, only pays for hospitalization in cases of "complications of pregnancy." Instead, Metcalf found that Barrette could get a "silver" plan in the state insurance exchange for $165 per month that would actually cover Barrette in the case of any sort of serious or even moderate illness. Which is the very definition of insurance, isn't it?

Democrats on edge over Obamacare

She lost health coverage, blames Obama

Edie Littlefield, a stage-four gallbladder cancer survivor, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal blaming the Affordable Care Act for her canceled insurance policy. In her essay, Littlefield wrote that because of Obamacare, "I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan." But as Igor Volsky of Think Progress reports, Littlefield's insurer, United Healthcare, "dropped her coverage because they've struggled to compete in California's individual health care market for years and didn't want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby."

In fact, in May, United basically announced it would pull out of the individual market in California so its competitors will get stuck with all the sicker patients like Littlefield signing up in the first wave of Obamacare. Then United plans to jump back into the California market to cover the cheaper patients. In other words, Littlefield isn't losing her insurance because of Obamacare, she's losing her insurance because her insurance company is cutthroat and greedy, just as insurance companies have always been.

According to a report by Dylan Scott at Talking Points Memo, a Seattle woman named Donna received a cancellation letter from her insurance company regarding her current plan. The letter steered Donna and her family into a more expensive option and said, "If you're happy with this plan, do nothing." The letter made no mention of the Washington State insurance exchange, where Donna could find plenty of other more affordable choices, because the company wanted a convenient excuse to jack up Donna's rates.

Had Donna "done nothing," she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more per month on insurance than the cost of insurance she ultimately chose through the Obamacare exchange. In fact, the practice of trying to mislead customers has become so widespread that Washington state regulators issued a consumer alert to customers.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Republicans who have been desperate from the very beginning to destroy Obamacare at any cost, regardless of facts or the urgent health care crisis facing America, will continue to dig up stories of people supposedly harmed by the law. And journalists will hopefully continue to investigate these allegations, helping us all sort fact from fiction.

In the meantime, there's a side benefit to all this: If you are one of the small fraction of Americans who currently relies on the individual insurance market and has seen your current policy canceled, call a journalist — like one of those in the stories above. Reporters all across the country are hungry for real-life stories about how Obamacare is working.

Plus, most reporters have access to high-speed Internet. If you can't get through to the Obamacare exchange site, there's a journalist standing by willing to help you navigate the exchange options and explore your pros and cons in terms of costs and benefits. The website might still be glitchy, but old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting is as reliable as ever.

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 10, 2013 at 9:31am

oh and you really have to love this piece....first of all it is from Forbes....second it repeats a bogus story about an insurance cancellation and then the dork has the balls to pontificate about the private sector and basic economics anointing himself with righteousness. funny he doesn't mention that goldman got 10 billion dollars in taxpayer's money to bail them out. but according to his opinion piece i guess they should have just gone bankrupt....but they didn't thanks to government funds and in thanks, seems they outsourced 1,000 jobs to singapore...

oh and the little snarky comment about cellphones and insurance is rather reminescent of louie gohmert and his asking "How could you say I want to starve poor children when they're all so fat anyway?"

John Tamny, Forbes Staff

I cover the intersection of economics and politics.

Op/Ed

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11/10/2013 @ 9:00AM |18,230 views

President Obama Clearly Never Worked For Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs Headquarters, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For newly minted employees of Goldman Sachs, one of the first things they’re instructed on during training is the ephemeral nature of investment banks. Using deal ‘tombstones’ from decades past, established employees ask them to look closely at the list of now-defunct underwriters of long ago deals.

The purpose of such an exercise is to remind them once again that when it comes to financial institutions, their existence is far from a forever thing. Second, it’s to sear in their minds the basic truth that one false move from an errant employee can bring the whole company down.

Lessons from Goldman Sachs loom large in light of the rollout of President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, otherwise known as Obamacare. Though it was Obama’s goal to make access to healthcare universal, he left the ACA’s creation largely to Congress and bureaucrats whose creation of Healthcare.gov threatens to wreck any presumed legacy of success for the Obama administration. Had Obama been lucky enough to experience Goldman Sachs training, it’s fair to presume that he wouldn’t have been so lax about letting others write and then create the very legislation that would carry his name.

It’s popular now to suggest that the staggering incompetence that gave us Obamacare is limited to a flawed website. If only that were true. In truth, Obamacare’s problems merely begin with the website, and will grow much worse assuming Heathcare.gov is ever fixed.

That is so because contrary to its billing as a market-based exchange, it’s nothing of the sort. Healthcare.gov at its core is a wealth redistribution scheme that promises to fail for it ignoring basic economics.

Indeed, basic economics dictates that there’s no such thing as a ‘free good.’ That’s a major problem because Obamacare not only promised healthcare for all, but it promised gold-plated access to healthcare at costs lower than had previously prevailed in the actual marketplace. To put it very plainly, any legislation that promises more of a market good at a below market price is by definition a very expensive lie.

Since it is, stories about people like Dianne Barrette suddenly losing health insurance plans that cost $54/month in return for plans that cost $591/month were inevitable. There’s once again no such thing as a free good, and unless federally mandated insurance plans offering everything – including maternity benefits for men – were going to be given away by insurance companies hurdling toward bankruptcy, it was inevitable that what Obama promised was going to be accompanied by a much larger price tag for individuals.

Beyond that, it can’t be stressed enough that what was being promised had nothing to do with insurance. Here Republicans are just as much at fault for mandating that insurance companies offer ‘insurance’ without regard to pre-existing conditions. Drivers of fancy cars would love such a luxury, but if this applied to car insurance, the cost of it would skyrocket for the safest drivers eschewing insurance until the day of the unforeseen accident.

There’s no affordable car insurance sans safe drivers paying into the pool, and healthcare is logically no different. Rather than pay for health insurance that will be there by government mandate no matter the condition, basic economic incentives tell us that the healthiest would eagerly embrace paying the fine for not buying health insurance until such a day when it’s truly needed.

The other lesson taught to new Goldman employees early on is the one about managing expectations. The way it’s put at Goldman, and this is constantly drilled into the heads of employees, is that they must ‘underpromise and overdeliver.’ The idea is to set expectations low so that when amazing service is delivered, customers of the bank are bowled over by all the good things that come their way.

In Obama’s case he promised satisfied Americans that they could keep their health plans if they preferred them, only to have basic economics come back to haunt him yet again. Many Americans, particularly the healthier ones, logically only want to insure for the truly unexpected and catastrophic, all the while paying out of pocket for routine doctor visits. The latter is the proper definition of health insurance, but going back to mandates that essentially promised the world, their insurance plans no longer pass muster in the mind of a president and Congress who almost never consider economics when they legislate. The obvious result is that many insured Americans will not be able to keep their plans, and will only be insured in the future if they’re willing to break the bank to do so. Lots of luck there; instead they’ll pay the fine for not buying insurance on the way to soaring costs, and then they’ll buy it when they need it.

The perhaps logical response is that since true insurance is once again for the unexpected and catastrophic, and as such is inexpensive, President Obama and Congress should go back to the drawing board and craft a way to subsidize its purchase for the truly needy. That sounds nice, but should be avoided. Indeed, as the Barrette example makes plain, health insurance when left to the markets is cheap. In that case, and as evidenced by the fact that cellphones are ubiquitous in the poorest locales of the United States, Americans should learn to prioritize, including buying insurance over former luxury items like cellphones.

Back to President Obama, his disdain for the private sector has come back to haunt him, and could possibly destroy his presidency. Had he worked for Goldman Sachs or another company like it he would have understood what horrors can be wrought by underlings lacking proper supervision. He’d have also understood that successful people in the private sector always manage expectations rather than make promises that are defied by basic economics.

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 10, 2013 at 10:14am

"Dianne Barrette also popped up on television on a CBS news report in which she lamented that her $54-per-month insurance plan had been canceled under Obamacare. But Nancy Metcalf at Consumer Reports investigated Barrette's story and found that her current policy was a "textbook example of a junk plan that isn't real health insurance at all." According to Metcalf, if Barrette had ever tried to use her insurance for anything more than a sporadic doctor's visit, "she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.""

Permalink Reply by LoveLife&Laughter on November 10, 2013 at 10:47am

Dumb and dumber. They depend on it...

Permalink Reply by ProblemAgain on November 10, 2013 at 11:02am

and you have to remember that forbes has been a republican piece ever since steve forbes became the owner. malcolm forbes, while he had an outlook, at least tried to maintain some semblance of journalism. but under the leadership of steve forbes (who competed for the republican nomination for president) any mention of obama or democrats seems to unleash boiling vitriol....an example?

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10/31/2013 @ 7:46AM |203,264 views

The Liberal War On Food Stamps

Adam Ozimek, Contributor

English: McDonalds' sign in Harlem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can’t remember a more misguided attempt at attacking corporations than the move to frame food stamps as corporate welfare. Clearly liberals clinging to this think they have found a new clever argument for the minimum wage, but instead all they’re doing is making food stamps look bad. Here is one highlight from a recent example at the Guardian where the author complains about a help line that McDonald's uses to give its employees help:

Perhaps I’m being unreasonable, but it seems to me that when Republicans are so vocal about how much they hate government programs like SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) and Medicaid and indeed anything that makes life a little more feasible for low-income or no-income Americans, they should surely be able to work up a small sweat at such a blatant example of the system being gamed. Just last month congressional Republicans voted unanimously to cut $39bn from the food stamp program, and I surely don’t have to waste words here outlining their opposition to any form of government subsidized healthcare. Why then, when they have made their objection to welfare programs abundantly clear are they seemingly okay with hugely profitable corporations exploiting these programs while they underpay their workers?

The McResource help line in question is designed to help workers seek assistance. Here is how the company describes the purpose of this on its website:

The McResource Line consultant will research your situation to give you current, accurate information and resources that fit your needs.

McResource Line consultants were able to direct an employee to a local energy assistance program and credit counseling after he was told his utilities would be shut off.

The McResource Line was able to find late night and weekend hour childcare solutions for a swing manager when her babysitter suddenly quit.

Providing free financial advice and help finding out what kind of public assistance is available seems like the kind of useful thing that liberals would applaud if a non-profit or government were providing it. And since liberals regularly demand that corporations engage in charitable corporate social responsibility to workers throughout their supply chains, you’d think this would be something they would applaud. But in their misguided attempt to paint corporations as villains they instead try to give Republicans a new reason to not like food stamps by labeling it corporate welfare.

The end goal of pieces like this is to push for a $15 minimum wage. Unfortunately, a far more likely outcome than a $15 minimum wage is that corporations will simply stop offering services that implicitly acknowledge they employ low income people so they can avoid negative stories like these. Conservatives believe that minimum wages lead to more unemployment, and people on unemployment are going to rely on more not less public assistance. Maybe you don’t believe this but the conservatives you’re purportedly trying to convince do. So if you’re going to try to sell them on an argument that a higher minimum wage will lead to less food stamps you’re wasting your time. You may succeed is raising their ire more about food stamps, but you’re simply not going to sell them on a minimum wage with these arguments. My guess is those who write or cheer pieces like this are simply too cloistered in their own ideological bubbles to understand that.

Food stamps are an excellent program. It really is the sort of basic safety net that should have near 100% support. The recent cuts to the program only amounted to a 5% change, but there are larger changes being considered. Let’s not try to undermine this program further by putting it on the corporate welfare radar of Tea Party republicans.

Liberal war on food stamps??? rather it is the question of why the taxpayers should subsidize corporations which hire workers for minimum wage, part-timers and contractual workers to avoid the costs of really being an employer by passing the buck to the taxpayers. but i guess it is fine for the govt to subsidize walmart and fast food corporations but wrong to help the actual employees....

the estimated cost to taxpayers thru social programs is between 900,000 and 1.7 million dollars a year for a walmart . the variance is dependent upon the size and number of employees etc....

and then you have fast food...

Would you like a living wage with that?

The fast-food industry is one of the nation's largest employers of low- and minimum-wage workers. And according to one group, employees are often not paid enough and forced to turn to government programs for assistance.

According to the National Employment Law Project's (NELP) newest report, because the fast-food industry pays its workers less than a living wage, U.S. taxpayers must foot the bill in the form of the public assistance programs these workers must use to get by. McDonald's alone, according to the group, cost taxpayers $1.2 billion last year.

"What this report shows," explained NELP policy analyst Jack Temple, "is that whether or not you work in the fast-food industry or eat fast food, the industry is costing you. The low-wage business model that this industry is based on drains resources from the economy by forcing low-pay workers to rely on public assistance in order to make ends meet." Such assistance includes programs like the earned income tax credit, SNAP benefits (food stamps), Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

At least one group has taken issue with NELP's argument. Employment Policies Institute research director Michael Saltsman explained that the current system is preferable to raising the minimum wage substantially. "The earned income tax credit has lifted thousands of people out of poverty, and it has done it without the consequences of increasing the minimum wage," Saltsman said.

Based on a recent report by NELP, the website 24/7 Wall St. identified the seven publicly traded fast-food companies that cost the government the most money.

No. 1: McDonald's

Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $1.2 billion
CEO compensation: $13.7 million
U.S. restaurant workforce: 707,850
Revenue: $27.57 billion
Net income: $5.47 billion

McDonald's (MCD) remains extremely profitable. The burger chain's net income was nearly $5.5 billion last year. The company also effectively returned all of its profits to shareholders, paying out a total of $5.5 billion in dividends and stock buybacks.

While arguments have persisted on both sides as to whether McDonald's should or should not increase its workers' pay, the company itself recently demonstrated just how difficult living on less than $8 an hour can be.

In July, a sample budget from the company's financial planning website for employees was leaked. The planners made several questionable assumptions, inclu

No. 2: Yum Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC)

Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $648 million
CEO compensation: $14.1 million
U.S. restaurant workforce: 379,449
Revenue: $13.63 billion
Net income: $1.60 billion

Yum Brands (YUM) has had enormous success in China due to rising incomes, as well as the popularity of KFC and Pizza Hut in the country. However, concerns over food safety in the wake of avian bird flu outbreaks, as well as inappropriate antibiotics use on the part of its suppliers, have recently resulted in lower sales. Still, Yum! Brands' net income has been steadily rising since 2008.

Compared with CEOs of other low paying fast-food chains, David Novak received the highest compensation, at more than $14 million in 2012. There has been much criticism that the company's workers are underpaid and assertions this costs U.S. taxpayers nearly $650 million per year. Despite this, Yum professes a strong relationship with its employees, and claims "to recognize and compensate employees based on their performance."

No. 3: Burger King

Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $356 million
CEO compensation: $6.4 million
U.S. restaurant workforce: 208,307
Revenue: $1.97 billion
Net income: $118 million

Burger King (BKW) has struggled to compete with Wendy's (WEN) and McDonald's (MCD) in recent years. Poor pricing, a limited menu, and a "target market of men in their early 20s -- a demographic that has been hit hard by unemployment," contributed to the company's troubles, according to a 2012 report by The Wall Street Journal. Last year, Wendy's overtook Burger King in total sales at its restaurants.

Despite the recent slide in sales, the company has been able to increase its profitability, and net income rose from $88 million in 2011 to $118 million in 2012. This is likely due in large part to Burger King's shift towards franchising all of its stores. Critics of the chain, including New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, have argued Burger King has a responsibility to improve its workers' pay.

No. 4: Wendy's

Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $278 million
CEO compensation: $5.8 million
U.S. restaurant workforce: 162,876
Revenue: $2.51 billion
Net income: $7 million

Wendy's returned $39 million to shareholders in fiscal 2012 and paid CEO Emil Brolick $5.8 million in total compensation. Most of the company's workers earn low wages, and according to NELP, they cost U.S. taxpayers more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

While labor advocates have pushed the company to pay its workers more, Wendy's may not be well positioned to pay its employees a higher salary. As of last year, the company's net income was just $7 million. Over the last 12 months, that number rose only slightly, to $15 million.

No. 5: Dunkin' Donuts

Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $274 million
CEO compensation: $1.9 million
U.S. restaurant workforce: 160,732
Revenue: $658 million
Net income: $108 million

When Dunkin' Brands (DNKN) went public in 2011, its debt level was relatively high, according to The Wall Street Journal. In spite of the high debt load, Dunkin' owners borrowed more money and paid themselves $500 million in dividends.

Much of the company's workforce is paid a low wage, with crew members and cashiers earning slightly above minimum wage on average, according to Glassdoor.com.

The company's ability to raise wages may be constrained by its debt load. Last year, Dunkin' Brands had over five times its equity in debt and paid out more than 11 percent of its sales in interest expenses. Still, the donut and coffee company recently revealed plans to expand to the U.K. over the next five years.

6. Sonic
> Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $164 million
> CEO Compensation: $1.7 million
> U.S. restaurant workforce: 96,012
> Revenue: $544 million
> Net income: $36 million

Unlike the other major fast-food restaurants, Sonic operates exclusively as a drive-in restaurant, with skating carhops who serve customers in their cars. The company notes that carhops are a “brand treasure,” and because many are tipped, some do actually earn better than minimum wage. Sonic generated $36 million in profits in fiscal 2012. The company also returned about $30 million to shareholders with stock buybacks and dividends, while paying its CEO a total compensation of $1.7 million. Sonic’s CEO stated in February that a hike in the minimum wage “would put pressure on profit margins,” although he also noted the company would adapt to a change. As of the last fiscal year, the company’s net profit margin was less than 7%.

7. Domino’s
> Cost to U.S. taxpayers: $126 million
> CEO Compensation: $9.1 million
> U.S. restaurant workforce: 73,920
> Revenue: $1.68 billion
> Net income: $112 million

Domino’s has more than doubled its net income since 2008, when the company posted $54 million in earnings. Many of Domino’s employees are likely enrolled in government programs. According to NELP, the company could have raised employee wages rather than spend that money expanding aggressively overseas and investing heavily in technology aimed at easing the ordering and delivery process. The stock has surged over the last five years with the share price up more than 900%. Meanwhile, the compensation of J. Patrick Doyle, Domino’s CEO since 2010, amounted to more than $6 million in 2011 and more than $9 million in 2012.

Proof beyond doubt

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