LOS ANGELES — Some Los Angeles diners are discovering an unfamiliar new item when the bill comes for the truffled lobster Bolognese and for their crunchy Spanish fried chicken and waffles – a 3 percent surcharge for employees’ medical insurance.

The charge first appeared at one Los Angeles-area restaurant late last year; by early September, more than a dozen mainly high-end eateries followed suit. The added cost has given some diners heartburn and thrust the restaurants’ owners unwillingly into the debate over the Affordable Care Act.

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Sarah Huxhold, a server at Milo & Olive in Santa Monica, Calif., will be able to get health insurance coverage because of a 3 percent surcharge on restaurant bills. Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times

The health-care surcharge, the restaurant owners insist, isn’t a political statement, but a way to offer valuable benefits to employees while maintaining their profits, which are slim even at the most successful eateries.

“We want our staff to have health care,” said Josh Loeb, the co-owner of several popular dining spots. “It’s not because we support Obama or don’t support Obama, or are Democrats or are not Democrats.”

The Los Angeles-area restaurants aren’t the first to charge customers to cover health care.

After San Francisco implemented a health-care mandate in 2008, many restaurants there adopted a surcharge to cover the cost of health insurance for employees.

Last December, Los Angeles restaurateur Bill Chait made a splash by introducing a 3 percent “Healthy LA” charge at his French restaurant Republique.

Loeb said he was inspired by the Northern California pioneers and emailed a group of “like-minded” restaurant owners earlier this year to see whether they could plan a course of action together. The owners he reached out to, Loeb said, all run high-quality spots with many of the same clientele.

Many of the restaurant owners said they had been mulling over providing health insurance for years. They took the plunge after watching the Affordable Care Act pass and seeing other businesses find ways to offer health care for their employees.

“We decided it would be a good thing to do it as a group,” said Josiah Citrin, the chef-owner of Melisse in Santa Monica. “Usually when lots of people do things it’s easier to make change.”

Citrin joined in even though Melisse doesn’t have enough workers to fall under the employer mandate that starts in 2016. That provision of the act requires businesses with more than 50 full-time workers to provide health insurance. The coverage will be a particular boon to longtime employees who are getting older, he said.

Younger restaurant workers such as Sarah Huxhold are also cheering the surcharge.

Huxhold, a 31-year-old server at Milo & Olive in Santa Monica, said she lost her insurance through work last year after quitting to pursue a career in music. While out of work, her mom helped her buy coverage for about $500 a month, but Huxhold decided it was too expensive and dropped the plan in December.

Since then, she said she has tried unsuccessfully to get insurance through Medi-Cal. She’s been forced to scour Groupon for a deal on eye exams and pinned her glasses together to avoid getting a new pair.

Now that she will have insurance, she plans to get an annual physical and visit the dentist and optometrist.

“I’m really excited about having insurance again,” she said. “There is no way I can pay for those things out of pocket.”

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