Half-Assed From Whole Foods

Writing--where else?--on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, Whole Foods C.E.O. John Mackey presents the non-ignoramus's argument against what he calls "ObamaCare." This, in contrast to the all-ignoramus's arguments lately heard at town halls/brawls/mauls across the length and br. of the land. Let's see what he recommends.

After the usual throat-clearing about the projected deficit, Medicare and Social Security and Baby Boomers and etc., he lays on us his overall theme: "...we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction--toward less government control and more individual empowerment."

When a C.E.O. trumpets "individual empowerment," watch your wallet, warm up your lie detector, and keep an eye out for someone--usually a non-union "team member"--tasked with clobbering you over the head with a copy of Atlas Shrugged. Here are Mackey's eight proposals:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees' Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

This sounds nice, but does that mean that Whole Foods is offering employment to those Americans--let's use the conservative figure of 40 million--who have no insurance? Or the Christ-knows-how-many-millions who pay for their own insurance? Bragging about how Whole Foods' "team members" have health insurance paid for by the company seems not germane to a discussion centered on the health insurance of people who have none, whose employers provide none, or who pay for their own, retail.

• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

Sold. Let's stop here! No? Oh all right...

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

Well. As I recall David Caruso saying in the pilot of NYPD Blue, "now we're getting into a bad area." I foresee this as leading to insurance companies at each other's throats (in the "conservative"ly approved manner), resulting in predatory pricing, increasing concentration, and the eventual creation of regional or national monopolies. Or, if that's too violent and upsetting for you, arranging nice, amicable cartels. Eventually we would have a "single-payer system," with the single payer being a private corporation beholden only to its (institutional, secretive) shareholders (if there are any), its bonus-grubbing executives, and its almost-certain-to-be-corrupt board of directors. With Grandpa's (i.e., my, soon enough) hip replacement at stake! Because I'm not as hip as I used to be.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

This is hallucinatory. Does Mackey imagine that "what is insured and what is not insured" would ever be determined, in private health insurance, by "individual customer preferences"? Is he unfamiliar with the term "pre-existing conditions"?

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

Yeah, this old wheeze. Actually Claire McCaskill (D., MO) put paid to this myth at a recent town hall. She pointed out that several states, including Texas, have indeed enacted tort reform, that medical lawsuits have indeed diminished in number and in awards in those states, and that, as a result, exactly no one's health insurance premiums have been reduced.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor's visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

This is beyond hilarious. As if knowing that you are--or someone is--being charged $11 for the box of Kleenex ™ used in your hospital stay, qualifies as "transparency." Mack seems to think that the charges and costs are valid; it's just that we're not being smart shoppers.

What he can solve in his next op-ed, then, is this brain teaser: Last year my daughter had to go to (the hilariously named) "urgent care" for a bad stomach ache. She saw a doc there we like and who was simpatico and attentive, but he couldn't figure it out. He sent us to the E.R. across the street, where we spent six hours. The patient had an x-ray, an ultra-sound, an MRI, and other procedures. By the end of the day they had no idea what the problem was. They gave her a scrip for Vicodin and sent her home. (She was better the next day, thanks.)

We got a bill for $12,000. Because of stupidity on my part, I had allowed her insurance to lapse. When the hospital learned of this, they immediately cut the bill literally in half. About which I was, like, "Thanks," and all, but here's the puzzler: What happened to the missing $6 K? Is it how the hospital bilks the insurer? Who, in turn, raises premiums?

That's the problem. Not assuring that we get itemized bills.

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

Baloney. Terms like "greater patient empowerment" and "responsibility" are always, when brandished in a WSJ op-ed, code words for "stick it to the customers and defend the corporations." Implicit in this discussion (and in his rhetorical question above, "What other goods and services do we buy...") is the insidious assumption that "buying health care" is just one more consumer act, no different from "buying snow tires." You read the reviews, you compare prices, you talk to the guy at Pep Boys, and you buys your chemo.

People like John Mackey should acknowledge that spending money on health care is unlike spending money on anything else in the world. You are entirely at the mercy of your medical professionals. No amount of Consumer Reports printouts or Epinions can be applied to the topic of your own--or, worse, your child's--body. And you are not competent to judge the correctness of what you're told. Oh, and: everything is at stake. Exercising "choice" and accepting "responsibility" are right-wing flash grenades meant to impair or halt the discussion. They're meaningless in this context.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Excellent: forty million people dependant on the kindness of strangers. Spoken like a naïve Christian, an aristocratic reactionary, or a blinkered libertarian, none of which are meant to be terms of admiration.

He goes on:

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care--to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

Yes it does. It says in the Preamble to the Constitution, "Look, don't worry. As long as you have your health, you have everything." No, wait, I'm thinking of a different document. The Preamble says, "...in order to...promote the general welfare..." If John Mackey doesn't think that health, food, and shelter promote the general welfare, he should go live in Soviet Union, where general welfare promotes you.

In other words, just as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so "a careful reading of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution" is the last, and sometimes first, refuge of the wing-nut. These people must be told, over and over (although they already know it; it's not as though they're arguing in good faith) that we can have the kind of society we choose to have.

If the Constitution permits slavery, and we decide our society shouldn't condone it, we change the document and improve the society. If the Constitution does not allow women to vote, and we want a society in which women do vote, we change the document and create that improved society. If the majority of us agree that the basic hallmark of a civilized society is that every member of it deserves to be as healthy as possible, we can create that society.

Mackey then includes some debate-society nerd-points ("Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them.") which beg every significant question, beginning with why forty-nine countries--including Wallis and Futuna, which I always thought were two claymation characters-- have longer life expectancies than the U.S. (Source: The fucking CIA, okay? http://tinyurl.com/yrq7l8.) He cites some supposed-to-be-horrifying statistic ("Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor's Business Daily."). That's 2.5% of the Canadian population. What are they waiting for? Elective procedures? Are there no Americans "waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment" for similar reasons?

He clouds the issue with this bit of squid ink:

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly--they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear--no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.--or in any other country.

Does this make sense? He seems to be asking, "Why would Brit and Canadian employees want 'supplemental health-care dollars' they can spend anyway they like?" To which the next question is: Who wouldn't? The answer is clear.

Then comes some summing-up lecture about obesity, diet, and a disingenuous little suggestion about "a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat."

But enough already. If you secretly felt that you "should" really shop at Whole Foods, because they're "whole" and they're "foods," you now have your reason to go elsewhere--both for food, and for arguments about health care.

Comments

[Scriobhaim]

What a bizarre conclusion: "now, because I have peppered Mackey's arguments with my brilliant refutations, you, dear reader, should shop at a different store."

[IowaGirl]

Weiner's takedown of the Mackey editorial is completely brilliant. Bravo! As there are no Whole Foods stores in Iowa that I'm aware of, I can't boycott it! Rats. Weiner completely gets under the skin of this "blinkered libertarian" and all his sort who attribute their blatant selfishness to higher ideals (humbug).

I did go into one of these food emporiums while living in Berkeley. It seemed like a place the Berkeley foodies would like, but way too pricey for regular shopping and regular folks. There must be many Bay Area liberals wrestling with their consciences after reading this despicable editorial by the Whole Foods CEO.

[classicalmusicman]

It's sad that there is so little choice in the US when it comes to so called "natural" foods. There is some but not enough. I don't like Mackey for the usual reasons, but as someone said, he's driven a lot of companies out of the "real" food business. He's yet another American monopolist. America talks a lot about choice and the free market, even as it does everything it can to destroy both.

What's even more troubling is why organic fresh food has become a specialty item. What we call "health food" was called "food" decades ago and maybe still is in Europe.

[Suzan Satterfield]

Disappointing to see that the same folks who bring you whole wheat organic flour are making the "let them eat cake" argument. I'll happily transfer my dollars to my local health food store and farmer's market. The "CEOs" of those places seem to understand the struggles of the working class.

[mike92117]

You can find that Lanny Davis, prominent liberal, supports Mackey:

Turns out Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who brought heat upon himself and his company yesterday by penning an anti-health care reform op-ed in the Wall Street Journal--has at least one familiar defender: Clinton special counsel, and Lieberman ally Lanny Davis.

"The John Mackey piece, which I actually helped him a little bit on, has really been distorted as often happened in the blogosphere where people have short attention span," Davis told me.

Davis represented Whole Foods in a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission, in which they charged that the upscale grocery store giant was engaging in monopolistic practices. Davis is a supporter of single payer health care, but, he says, disagreements with Mackey aside, Whole Foods is a progressive company that has instituted a strict cap on executive compensation and that provides 100 percent of their employees with health insurance. (Mackey says that Whole Foods covers 100 percent of premiums for 89 percent of all employees.)

Davis says the dust up over Mackey's op-ed is "an example of how we on the left start to mirror the extreme tactics on the right."

"He didn't attack Obama. It was an issues oriented piece."

[classicalmusicman]

Wasn't Lanny Davis shilling for Hillary Clinton when she was playing mobs similar to those now opposing Obama? I'm not expert on Davis, but he was opposed by Bush I's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Far as I know now, he's involved with Joe Lieberman.

Some liberal.

[AuntiepoppyCock]

I guess I won't eat another one of their wilted 40dollar salads.

[jemborg]

Wow! I'm a freedom loving Aussie and I find this paranoia over decent pubic health care amazing.

We've had it for almost 30 years.

I've expounded on this in many of Huffo's threads but let me simply say... America you deserve better, do not believe the Conservative lies.

[Ironhelix]

It's aabout big bonuses for the CEO's and Executives for denying coverage that they do so well, right now. That's why we're hearing the lies.

[starboymikey]

And speaking of Whole Foods, I would never shop there. They are the Walmart of the health food industry. Basically, they come into towns like mine and drive local businesses out, businesses that have been part of the community sometimes for decades. We are getting one here and there are already pickets at the construction site, though I doubt it will stop the "march of progress."

I love how Mackey calls his employees "team-members." At Walmart, they're "Associates." As if these near minimum-wage workers had some real stake in the companies they work for.

To be fair, though, Mackey is a step above Sam Walton, since Walmart offers its lower-level "Associates" virtually no health insurance at all.

[starboymikey]

What happened to the missing $6 K? Is it how the hospital bilks the insurer? Who, in turn, raises premiums?
__________­__________­__________

Actually, the difference between the 12K they tried to charge you and the 6K they eventually offered to settle for is the difference between what the uninsured are required to pay and the so-called "negotiated rate" that hospitals and clinics get from the insurer. It's usually around half.

If you are uninsured and saddled with a huge hospital bill, you can very often insist that you will only pay the same negotiated rate the insurer does.

That said, even the negotiated rate can break you and ruin the rest of your life in the case of a serious illness.

[givesflack]

The debate has changed from Universal Health Care to Public Option to Obamacare due to GOP propaganda. The idea started out of the necessity to reverse years of corporate monopoly and private concentration of wealth by the business sector and the need to expand public health care. The efforts to obscure the truth in this matter, thus the publics right to choice, shows how easily many of them can be mislead. It is precisely this ability to manipulate the public into forgoing their rights as citizens with red baiting and nazi comparisons that we should have a public option. It is precisely because their absolving their role as American citizens, IE. PUBLIC(US), to the private interest that we need stronger government involvement to lead us out of the myth that government is the problem not the solution. It's big business that is the problem and if the price you pay to phone companies, banks, cable, health isn't a tax in the disguise of user fee then you don't know how to read your bills. THIS is what taxation without representation really is.

[ctblue]

As long as you can read packaging labels, it doesn't matter if you shop at wal*mart. I personally like trade.r joe.s. Prices are always good and they are excellent to their employees. Happy shopping!

[redrockraven]

My wife and I have been shopping regularly at Whole Foods in Las Vegas for over 10 years. We sincerely thank the business CEO for providing his view of the health care issues facing the US. Since Mr. Mackey's views appear to be a direct contradiction to the healthy living ideals that we have until now believed that their stores promote, my wife and I will be taking our business to another store.

We do not intend to continue to support a hypocritical business that believes more in lining their own pockets and shortchanging their employees health plans than in promoting the health and welfare of their customers and employees.

[f252863]

Pretty funny that people advocating government control then exercise their free choice to opt out of something they don't like.

"Baloney. Terms like "greater patient empowerment" and "responsibility" are always, when brandished in a WSJ op-ed, code words for "stick it to the customers and defend the corporations." Implicit in this discussion (and in his rhetorical question above, "What other goods and services do we buy...") is the insidious assumption that "buying health care" is just one more consumer act, no different from "buying snow tires." You read the reviews, you compare prices, you talk to the guy at Pep Boys, and you buys your chemo."

Terrible analysis, not on the merits of the argument but because you say it is "baloney" it is. By the way the general welfare clause doesn't mean what you think it does, read some history and look up the definition of welfare as it was stated at the time. Thomas Jefferson would be turning in his grave at the level of government intervention we see today.

[chordchaser]

"After the usual throat-clearing about the projected deficit, Medicare and Social Security and Baby Boomers and etc., he lays on us his overall theme..."

The usual throat-clearing? Medicare isn't sustainable, neither is Social Security. These are facts. If you're trying to prove that Mackey's a vulture and that government entitlements work you might start by not ignoring them.

[dadw5boys]

Is your body RoundUp ready ?

Monsanto uses a virius to tranfer it's RoundUp ready gene to the seed .

Chances are that if you had a virius and ate the food from their seeds you are now RoundUp ready !


Watch " The Future of Food "

http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food

[mike92117]

Good post and very relevant to the health care debate.

[larissa68]

No. And I quote:

"To date, no plant virus is known to use a specific cellular receptor of the type that animal and bacterial viruses use to attach to cells."

http://www.microbiologybytes.com/virology/Plant.html

There is enough fear regarding genetics, try not to push false data. kthx.

[JimBT]

Mackey's plan deserves serious consideration for the simple fact Social Security, and Medicare are broke. Medicare has trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. He is right! Adding another huge government entitlement is not the way to go. Fix Medicare first!

Next the public option which will lead to a single payer Canadian style system which in the end means rationing health care and very long waits for simple things like a colonoscopy, mammograms and knee surgery.

How would a public option lead to a Canadian style system. Because no one can compete with the government. Ask Barney Frank!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLm9t9j-qKM

[dadw5boys]

How cab they ve broke with all the I OWE U's from the U.S. Government ???

You mean the U.S. Government can not pay it's bills ?

Did GW Bush BANKRUPT THE USA ???????? He tried really hard.

How many violations of the RICO ACT did the Bush Adminstartion ignor to get $217 TRILLION DOLLARS in bad paper setting in the banks ? 4 million violations ? 10 million ? 20 million ?