Whole Foods CEO has enraged his target demographic with right-wing rhetoric
allspinzone.com
I give him one week.
allspinzone.com
I have a different idea.
If you are a liberal who shops at Whole Foods, and you read John Mackey's article with his ideas about health care reform, why don't you think about whether the solutions he's proposing -- and has successfully implemented among thousands of happy, healthy Whole Foods employees -- might be worth some serious consideration.
Instead of, you know, rejecting his free market ideas out-of-hand with insulting ad hominem attacks and threats of a hard-line ideological boycott.
Tolerance, civility, honest debate, etc.
Just sayin'.
Because Whole Foods has been amazingly successful as a company in recent years. And they do have thousands of employees. And I'm fairly sure that those employees like being able to keep the majority of their health care dollars, instead of having them thrown away on overly comprehensive health insurance policies they don't want or need.
Firstly and most importantly thank you for keeping such a high standard of discourse. It's appreciated.
Secondly, many of Mackey's points are sound policy: health insurance should be universally deductable (or not) and HSAs may or may not be very effective.
However, others are disingenuous; all healthcare is rationed, in the US it's rationed by ability to pay whereas in Canada and the UK it's rationed by medical severity; food and shelter are already commonly provided by governments; the existence of faceless bureaucracies limiting care in traditional health insurance agencies and last but not least the Constitution's explicit disclaimer being treated as an exclusive list of rights to be guaranteed.
Most crucially in my view it entirely ignores the issue of insurers' ability to redefine their risk pools. What protection does Mackey's plan offer someone with a preexisting condition? Someone who develops a chronic and expensive condition? Someone who becomes unemployed? These are severely problematic use cases in the current system.
This split into conservatives and liberals, while sometimes meaningful, often hurts the debate. We can take each issue on its merits without referring to talking points, party lines, etc.
How is allowing consumers to purchase insurance across state lines right-wing? I can make the same argument for having an abortion instead of purchasing insurance.
Equalizing tax benefits for employer and individually purchased insurance? Who argues against that?
Price transparency? Tort reform? Tax deductible donations to the uninsured? Are you sure liberals are objecting to this?
Medicare reform is a pretty general statement.
The only position that can be considered "right-wing" is repeal government mandates for types of coverage.
Like the Congressmen that hasn't read their own bills, I have a feeling most boycotters haven't read the actual article. In this authors case, he seemed to skipped the most important part.
Things like that matter more to me than one guy's opinion column. (If he runs for President, though, I probably won't vote for him.)
I did think it was a bit weird to see the Whole Foods CEO writing that particular op-ed.
BTW it should be noted that Whole Foods sells mostly fats, highly processed carbs, cheeses, and wines to people who pay more b/c they are convinced that the food is more nutritious just because it is organic, etc.
People who blindly follow Whole Foods' marketing are the same sort of people who will blindly support health care reform as it's evolved thusfar... the current proposals have no clear specifics, focus on "evil corporations", and do little to change the perverse incentives that exist in today's heavily regulated, heavily subsidized healthcare industry.... similarly most Whole Foods shoppers are fat and unhealthy.
If you are skeptical of my statement, consider that nobody has yet been able to write a hypothetical sad story about a loved one who would be worse off under universal care -- this is not because some people would not be worse off, but because insufficient specifics have been released to make such a hypothetical story possible.
I am not sure I agree with this. At my local Whole Foods, the bike rack is usually filled with 30 or more bicycles. (Mostly employees, I assume, but I'm sure I'm not the only person that uses his bicycle for grocery shopping.) Inside, people seem to be thinner than the average shopper at Jewel down the street. (If you want highly-processed foods, that is where to find them -- everything is highly processed. So while Whole Foods may not be perfect, it's orders of magnitude better than "normal" grocery stores.)
I agree that Whole Foods has a lot of "unhealthy" food. If you eat nothing but steak, yeah, that's bad. But if you eat it once a month, it's better to buy a good one from a cow that was not pumped full of antibiotics and that ate what nature intended it to eat.
I am not sure that Whole Foods has a lot of "highly-processed carbs", though, so it would be good if you could clarify that. Sure, you can buy pasta there, but I consider that "minimally processed".
In addition to all that, they do have a lot of healthy food available that you can't find elsewhere. (I was happy to find some locally-grown peaches the other day. Fruit tastes good when it isn't shipped in from South America.)
So Whole Foods is not perfect, but like anything, it's a good tool. You can go there and get some great healthy food. Or you can go there and buy soda and cookies. It is up to you. (I am partial to some of their energy drinks. Not very healthy, but very delicious!)
I do acknowledge that Whole Foods had great produce and offers a lot of healthy food that isn't sold at most grocery stores... but I suspect that Whole Foods' growth has been fueled by selling expensive junk food to the same people who would never have shopped at Whole Foods when it smelled like body odor inside.
http://www2.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jmackey/2009/08/14/he...
After a quick read, I don't see any significant differences. This sounds like a desperate attempt to stop the boycott.
"This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health."
the assumption that every american adult has complete control over his life is false. i don't even believe that this is approximately true -- especially when health care is the issue at hand.
Control and responsibility are two different things - there are plenty of things we have no control over, but does that mean we shouldn't be responsible for ourselves?
You know, I've never even been to a Whole Foods, but I'm going to make a completely uneducated guess that your average Whole Foods shopper is a UMC, 30ish, former-hottie wife of a Lawyer/Doctor/businessman.
Did I guess right?