Whole Foods Founder Against Health Reform

I must admit that I was rather surprised about this story. When I think of Whole Foods stores, I generally think of their customers as liberals -- people who like to buy organic, protect the environment and support equal rights for everyone, including health care rights.

But even though Whole Foods founder John Mackey likes getting those liberal dollars, he is not about to agree with his customers politically. According to an excellent post over at The Rag Blog, Mackey is not only anti-union (we knew that), but he is also anti-health care reform. He doesn't think decent health care should be a right of every American (an easy point of view to have when you're as rich as he is).

Mackey wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal opposing the kind of reform the Democrats are trying to pass. He says, "...the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment."

Of course, it's easy to see what his motivation is in opposing health care reform. In the first paragraph of his article, he doesn't even mention health care -- just deficits and the possibility of new taxes. Obviously, saving himself some tax dollars is much more important than decent health care for Americans.

But Mackey does enumerate a few things he says we could do to "reform" health care. First, he wants health care insurance bought by an individual to be fully tax deductible (as a business's health insurance for it's employee's is). This would do nothing to help poor and working class folks get insurance, but it would put a few more dollars in the pockets of Mackey and his rich friends.

Then he wants to create high-deductible insurance policies. That means the patient would have to pay $2500-$5000 before the insurance policy would be liable for anything. Sounds great for the insurance company, but again, it would be disastrous for poor and working class folks, who don't usually have an extra few thousand dollars laying around. Has Mackey ever had to live on a working man's salary?

Next he wants to repeal government mandates over what a health insurance policy must cover. Once again, it sounds great for the insurance company, but not so good for the patients who need a good policy. You can fatten the insurance company's wallet, only to find when you get sick your illness is not covered. How does this help patients?

Mackey then wants to outlaw lawsuits against doctor's for malpractice. This one just blows me away. If a hospital allows a drunk or drug-addled doctor to operate on you, and he botches it so bad you become a quadriplegic. Your earning power has sunk to zero and medical costs have risen to an enormous amount, but you cannot sue the people responsible for it. That makes no sense at all.

Then he would make medical costs more transparent. He seems to think people wouldn't go to the doctor so much if they knew how much it cost. Ridiculous! People go to doctors and hospitals because they need medical care, regardless of how cheap or expensive the treatment is. When I broke my elbow and had to have an operation, I can assure you I knew exactly what that cost, because I received all the bills (and had to pay much of it myself because of inadequate insurance).

Mackey would also enact MediCare reforms that would "create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility." That sounds an awful lot like code words for "Make those old people pay for their own health care." mackey is starting to scare me now.

His final suggestion is to revise the income tax form so people can check a box and make a tax-deductible (of course) donation to help those without insurance. Yeah, that's gonna work! I'm sure that's going to cover the 50-80 million uninsured Americans.

I can't believe he even has the gall to call his ideas health care reform. Those ideas would be great for the insurance company to maximize their already enormous profits, but they would do little or nothing to help ordinary Americans receive decent and affordable health care.

After reading his ridiculous plan, all I can say is Mackey must own a lot of stock in the private health insurance companies! Maybe it's time to boycott Whole Foods.