John Mackey Health Care Views Launch Whole Foods Boycott

by mbaumgartner | August 14, 2009 at 12:07 pm

1425 views | 48 Recommendations | 36 comments

Whole Food Market CEO John Mackey has caused a stir with his commentary in the Wall Street Journal which may launch a Whole Foods Market Boycott

People seem to be reacting strongly to a detailed piece, providing some real alternatives and adding to the rational debate about ObamaCare and public health care in general.

In his op-ed, "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare," published Tuesday, Mackey criticized President Barack Obama's health care plan.

Mackey provided eight "reforms" he argued the U.S. can do to improve health care without increasing the deficit. He suggested that tax forms be revised to "make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance."

Mackey States:

While we clearly need health-care reform, 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.

It is likely not his comments about health maintenance that have upset his customers.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

It is more likely his suggestion that public health care as practiced in the UK and Canada is in fact a denial of right to health care:

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. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

His effort though is at least a rational attempt to provide some discourse and debate around the real principles of the Health Care Reform in the US. Which is a long way from the Town Hall debacles of the past weeks.

Here's what people are saying:

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eastvanray

at 13:08 on August 14th, 2009

This is insightful and timely. What on earth would people boycott his comapny for stating the obvious? Do these people take issue with the facts he presented? I am baffled.

Zlender

at 13:42 on August 14th, 2009

Finally someone that is not afraid to say what he thinks.

hadsie

at 13:55 on August 14th, 2009

This is crazy. Someone presents arguments and their opinions against an idea and you want to boycott his him and his company. Isn't that how democracy and freedom of speech is suppose to work? His comments about CAD healthcare may be a bit harsh, but they're not at all far from the truth.

eastvanray

at 14:06 on August 14th, 2009

Actually his comments about the Canadian health care system are accurate. However our system is no different in rationing treatment than the way HMO's work in the US. No one believes average Americans have unfettered access to all treatments. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.

nyctuber

at 13:59 on August 14th, 2009

I'm sure all Americans would be in perfect health if they could afford $100/lb organic Whole Foods chicken. What a hypocrite.

eastvanray

at 14:03 on August 14th, 2009

But no one would agrue that as the fattest country in the world the diet that they are eating now is not making them a healthy population. No need to buy organics but a few fruits and veggies, a few less colas and beers and the odd hour or so off the couch and on a bicycle wouldn't hurt either.

nyctuber

at 14:06 on August 14th, 2009

Agreed, but the idea of the Whole Foods CEO railing against the healthcare bill is pretty funny. They make their money off overpriced food for yuppies. Most of the population cannot afford Whole Foods.

Roy C

at 14:15 on August 14th, 2009

Tuber, I just shopped there yesterday. Some things are more expensive and some are competitive.

Thanks for posting this story, Mr Baumgartner.

If any of you take a look at either of two books about the left, The Treason of the Intellectuals and The Opiate of the Intellectuals, you will see that the left since the days of Dostoyevsky and the Russian Revolution has been inquisitional and extremely self-exalted.

You may not contradict them and you may not ask for real reason, that is, accountability of facts and evaluation of facts and principles towards reaching a resolution.

They "know" what the answer is and have known it since the time of the French Revolution. There is no "heterogeneity" for them. There is only their side, the good, the right, the just and the beautiful, and the other side are Untermenschen.

Cheney's Cadillac won't go left (not verified)

at 16:55 on August 14th, 2009

The left is easily painted as intellectually elitist... OK, fair enough. I suppose the redistribution of wealth is just plain wrong, no matter how you slice it.

BUT... the right is as easily painted as financially elitist, and you may not contradict them or they will burn you as un-patriotic or worse: un-Christian - and there is no debate allowed there either. It's the neo-con tautology, most of whom are on record as saying they would rather see Obama fail and America suffer then see him be the one at the helm as America pulls itself out of the mud layed down by 8 years of Bush Jr and Cheney... a system which supported the largest widening in the gap between rich and poor in American History. This rise of the individual in favor of the common good is ironic for a bunch that tries to deny Darwin (one of sooo many contradictions in that rhetoric... which is purely hegemonic).

To argue that the right is somehow more open for debate on their position is misguided.

Roy C

at 17:13 on August 14th, 2009

I have not argued that.

I am not on the right. I am in the center. I oppose the Republican's on their free trade policies, their unmindful watch on Wall Street, and their lack of insight as elitists into what average people experience.

So, the point here, about Whole Foods, is that the left sucks, not the JFK left, but the more radical chic left. When it comes time to point out the right's defects, I will more happy to do so.

nyctuber

at 18:39 on August 14th, 2009

Whole Foods is for the most part quite expensive. The CEO should submit a healthcare plan based on revenue from $7 a pack free range beef hot dogs.

maxnet

at 15:31 on August 14th, 2009

What exactly are American Values "Every Man for Himself" ? Just curious... nobody wants more debt - but what's the problem with wanting health care for all Americans - too many people seem to think that's a bad idea.

eastvanray

at 16:05 on August 14th, 2009

The debate is not about healthcare for all Americans. It is about a specific proposal(s) on the table right now intended to achieve that goal. I doubt many Americans believe that their fellow citizens should not have the opportunity for coverage, they seem to have an issue with the specific solution(s) being tabled.

American Values on trial (not verified)

at 16:38 on August 14th, 2009

I have to disagree - that's not what I see at all. I see lots of people screaming about socialism, most of them have no idea what it means, disrupting the forum for public debate defending a system they call "American". All the while polluting the debate by fear-mongering about "Death Panels"... so I think the question about values is fair - they are definitely on trial here - an America is failing to make a clear statement about the value it places on its citizens' well-being, it has for a long time, badly... both sides - but mainly the right and mainly the past 8 years. It's OK to go into deficit to bomb people overseas, but better not try that to keep those who can't afford it healthy...

Roy C

at 18:19 on August 14th, 2009

As Europe continues to age and not make children, all those welfare plans will be going up in smoke.

I mean something like 30% of German women don't even have children. Everyone lives longer and needs more medical care, yet there will be no one to work to produce that care, since these are not set-aside programs that collect money as you live, but rather programs where the elderly are basically cared for by those who still work.

The European party is about to be over.

rng

at 19:29 on August 14th, 2009

all those welfare plans will be going up in smoke.

I'll take odds on that .. as the so called socialized capitalist countries recover (Norway, France, Germany etc) because they had balanced fiscal and social policies that preserved skills and populace and the fiscal based economies of US and UK who produce little but gamble much don't. I wouldn't be backing your calls on this one

Roy C

at 19:50 on August 14th, 2009

Demographics trumps all that. Period.

rng

at 05:49 on August 15th, 2009

Roy - you will learn as you observe very time that in demographics and economics nothing is a 'period'. There are always developments in terms of social development and welfare that transform current thinking. The world is more complex than the models you read about and then posit here as answers

If for example you want to understand what is really happening to the US economy and why the Republican cut tax mantra won't work review the works on a balance-sheet recession. It isn't even in the American economic text books because it wasn't expected to happen here. Once you get that concept, you will see why in this cycle we need govt spending.

kayumochi

at 19:53 on August 14th, 2009

For 15 years I was a part of the Japanese healthcare system, a market-based, single payer system that while isn't perfect is a whole lot better than what we have here in the States (80% of the hospitals and clinics are privately owned - a percentage higher than in the USA). In the mid-1990's Taiwan created a single payer healthcare system from scratch by searching the world for what worked and what didn't. About the same time Israel went with a more expensive healthcare system that wouldn't be possible without generous financial contributions from the USA. Maybe we should ask the Israeli lobby to get us the healthcare we deserve.

Roy C

at 19:55 on August 14th, 2009

Well, maybe, we can do it state by state and not 300 million people under one plan.

Europe doesn't have 300 million under one plan. Japan doesn't. Canada doesn't.

And your plan in Japan is going the way of the DoDo bird because the Japanese don't make any children.

kayumochi

at 20:03 on August 14th, 2009

When you can reply intelligently Roy C come back and try again.

eastvanray

at 13:21 on August 15th, 2009

people we would. And economies of scale would make a 300 million person single payer system the most efficient in the world.

Roy C

at 20:08 on August 14th, 2009

You insult because you can't beat the argument.

All the major industrialized nations programs for the elderly are about to hit walls in the next ten years. I learned this from The Economist and from the experts on retirement plans whose articles we read in business ESL classes in Europe and from other business experts I have had the opportunity to interview in my work.

Now, MoonWolf is gone. So, watch your mouth. I managed to get him to cross the line and get booted out.

albertacowpoke

at 20:16 on August 14th, 2009

The discussion here is just more of the same. Since when is health care a right or left issue. Shake your head people and figure out a way it is best delivered.

Don't pick out the worst examples of the either Canadian or British Health Care. Ask yourselves how it is best delivered, by being objective and actually looking at all aspects of British or Canadian Health Care. How about Health Care in France, Holland, Sweden and other places.

My suggestion to the American public would be, not to let the spinners on either side overwhelm you, but be openminded to checking the facts yourself. Be sure in your mind of what you want Health Care to be and don't become a parrot for someone else.

Ok I said my piece

Roy C

at 20:23 on August 14th, 2009

All the retirement programs, especially the medical ones, are doomed to go under in the next ten years as the Baby Boomers overwhelm the system. That is a fact.

Whatever you pick, you have to pay for. The money is not there anymore. The systems were designed for a lot fewer retirees and a lot more workers.

People live longer now and have a lot more access to high-tech medicine. The expense has multiplied, even as the number of workers to support the retirees has gone way down.

Europe and Japan are demographically in retreat, and all the plans will go bust.

The US Social Security system will survive with people retiring later and denying benefits to those with bucks, but Medicare plans cannot survive here or in any other major industrialized nation in the near future.

Roy C

at 20:29 on August 14th, 2009

There are dozens, hundreds, even, of articles by responsible thinkers in this field. This is just one.

The situation is more urgent in Japan, where one in four people will be elderly by 2015. This demographic shift will force Japanese policymakers and companies to rethink conventional pensions, health care schemes, and mandatory retirement ages.

Falling birth rates are also expected to shrink Japan's population to around 95 million people (from the current 128 million) by mid-century, which will impact the labor market, housing sector, and markets for most consumer goods.

kayumochi

at 21:12 on August 14th, 2009

Roy C, my daughter was born in Japan, underwent a serious operation in Japan and I was diagnosed with cancer in Japan. For 15 years I used that system. I know it inside and out, backwards and forwards. I speak decent Japanese. My in-laws are Japanese. Do you think I am impressed by your cut and paste and your borrowed knowledge of Japanese healthcare?

rng

at 05:54 on August 15th, 2009

I apologize for the threat you received above from the commenter, Roy C: Now, MoonWolf is gone. So, watch your mouth. I managed to get him to cross the line and get booted out.

You would be within your rights and site policies to report this to the editors as online bullying. Please understand not all in the community here are so aggressive. Thank you for posting

Roy C

at 07:02 on August 15th, 2009

Your melodramatic personalization of the problem reflects a lack of knowledge of the US medical system.

If you have a job, there is insurance. If you don't have a job, there is Medic-Aid. Sometimes people "shop" states and move to get the best deal.

I am not trying to impress you. I didn't begin the insults. Your mind is made up. Your idea, though, that there is no help here is complete, and I mean complete, nonsense.

You simply do not know what we have here and your dismissive attitude derives from that.