These ideas aren’t at all radical, until you realize that most people believe that two plus two is five when it comes to health care. They listen to political and media elites who claim that our current health care problems are squarely the fault of the free market.

Take our friend Annemarie from a previous thread. She cannot be convinced of the role of government in causing our health care problems. She is typical of many in the “enlightened” classes that gravitate to Whole Foods. When confronted with the reality that two plus two doesn’t equal five, these people go apoplectic.

It is not just their faith in Obama that you’re challenging, it is the entire mental world they live in. Markets are bad and savage, they believe. Competition is evil, they believe. Necessary services must be provided in an organized, harmonized fashion, they believe. Challenge this fantasy world, as Mackey did, and you are assaulting everything they hold dear.

“•?Equalize the tax laws so 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.”

“•?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.”

“•?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.”

“•?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.”

“•?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?”

“•?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.”

“•?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.”

What is so damn radical about the above ideas? I’m not saying I agree with all of them or that I think all of them are even workable. I’m just trying to figure out what on earth has the delicate WF customer panties in a knot over this article? Is it becuase he DARES to disagree with Exalted Dear Leader? Is that it?

When we are given lousy service or products by the government, we do not have option of boycotting their services. We are forced to accept whatever level or quality of service they offer. They have a monopoly that is maintained through the use of force.

I wonder how some of those who have decided to boycott Whole Foods would feel if they were rounded up at the point of a gun and forced to shop there. If they resisted they could be shot or imprisoned. If Whole Foods were to conduct business this way they would also not have to maintain their current levels of service or quality of product, which I assume has been at least satisfactory (I don’t have one nearby).

I also wonder how much of Mackey’s views are because he is a Libertarian and how much is because he wants people to have health savings accounts that let people buy supplement and herbal remedies from Whole Foods. Some of what they sell may be beneficial but much of it is pure snake oil where the production costs have no real relationship with the… Read More price it is sold at. This is especially true for anything listed as homeopathic; aside from all scientific evidence showing that when you dilute all of a herb out of a sugar pill it tends to just be a placebo, there is a question of how one sugar pill can cost more than another when dilution should also apply to the cost with the cost of the herb being negligible and all cost remaining in the sugar pill itself.

I previously thought Whole Foods was all about Lexus liberals with more money than sense.

Now that I have learned the Whole Foods CEO actually has some intelligent alternatives for real health care reform, I think I’ll become a new customer. That is the kind of company I want to support.

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.