Will Obamacare Raise the Price of a Big Mac?

In exchange for lower health premiums under Obamacare, experts say shoppers could pay higher prices on everything from printer paper to French fries.

Complying with the Affordable Care Act will cost as much as $420 million annually, McDonald’s CFO Peter Bensen said during a conference call Monday, according to CFO Journal. And when the new law goes fully into effect in 2014, it’s possible menu prices will be raised to cover the health costs.

Analysts say businesses with a large number of hourly wage workers, who traditionally had minimal or no health insurance—from fast food joints to retailers—may have to adopt a similar strategy. “I would expect prices at McDonald’s (MCD) to go up,” says Les Funtleyder, who manages a health care fund at Poliwogg, a hedge and venture capital firm. (A McDonald’s spokeswoman says the company doesn’t set prices for its franchised restaurants, which represent about 90% of its 14,000 U.S. outposts, and that “it would be premature and inaccurate to speculate on raising menu prices to offset these costs.”)

But experts say the price hikes could extend beyond chicken McNuggets. Some analysts believe companies may use health care as an excuse to raise prices, even if the added costs don’t warrant the increase. Peter Saleh, a restaurant analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, expects sit-down diners at restaurants like The Olive Garden, owned by Darden Restaurants (DRI), and The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE), which own a greater proportion of their locations than some fast food chains, to eventually pay at least 2% more to eat there. But Saleh says it’s too soon to know how the companies will cope with the new mandates: “A lot of them at this point aren’t willing to give us estimates about it.”