Pizza Hut President Tells Panel the Added Price of Health Plan

Under fire for offering health benefits to foreigners that it does not provide to U.S.-based workers, the head of Pizza Hut said Friday that providing coverage could cost pizza lovers an extra $1 a pie.

Pizza Hut President Allan Huston, an unlikely player in the increasingly heated debate over health care reform, came under intense congressional attack for his company’s policy of providing better benefits overseas.

“This is a flagrant double standard,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusets Democrat who scheduled the hearing before his Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

Huston defended the fast-food giant, saying the 50% contribution to health care costs that Pizza Hut must pay by law in Germany and Japan would cause a 10% to 11% pizza-pie price hike and job losses if applied in the United States.

Pizza Hut, which made about $370 million in profits last year, hit the limelight last week when a health reform group accused it of paying for workers’ coverage abroad but lobbying against delivering the same benefits here.

“It really came as a shock to all of us that, overnight, we were somehow transformed from a pizza baker to a target in a national political debate,” Huston said.

Kennedy said the McDonald’s Corp. president “chose not to come” to the hearing to testify about its practice of insuring employees abroad but not chipping in for hourly workers here.

A Big Mac, large fries and Coke were set down at the witness table by committee staff in the place of a McDonald’s representative.

But several senators rallied behind Pizza Hut, and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas--the home state to Pizza Hut--took to the Senate floor to decry what he called “misleading attacks.”

“I don’t know what company or industry will next be attacked by the White House, the Democratic National Committee, or their allies, but from the arguments they use, I know that they like their pizzas with a lot of baloney,” Dole said.

One of the most controversial issues in the debate concerns employer mandates--a requirement that businesses pay most of their workers’ insurance costs.

Pizza Hut, and its parent Pepsico, belong to a coalition battling against employer mandates.