Have you read the op-ed piece that John Mackey, chairman of whole Foods, put in the Wall Street Journal on August 12? He’s gotten a lot of grief for telling the truth (truth-tellers often do!) with some ignoramuses spouting off about how they will boycott his stores since it is “their” money and they will spend it where they want. I say ignoramus with the utmost respect since they appear oblivious to the irony of their position. First of all, Whole Foods is the epitome of the liberal left establishment. Their parking lot is full of cars with Obama stickers. Fair trade products; two aisles of vitamins and supplements; “total” recycling programs; natural foods. You name it – if it helps the environment or liberal causes, they are on it. So withholding your money from his stores will negatively affect like-minded liberal employees first. Smart move. Second, these nimrods fail to realize that their complaint against Mackey is EXACTLY the same complaint that conservatives have against the health plan being pushed by Obamamaniacs – spending someone else’s money on a project they don’t want. After all, isn’t it your tax dollars that they are planning to spend (and the tax dollars of your children, and their children, and their children, and their children,…….)?
In the Wall Street Journal piece, Mackey makes some very sane suggestions. He promotes:

•?Removing the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible insurance plans and health savings accounts. 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.
Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.
•?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.
•?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.

I would add one more. When you visit a medical facility, they have 48 hours after your discharge to give you a complete bill for every service you received while there. Not 15 different bills from people you are not sure even saw you. If it’s not on that bill, you don’t owe it. But that’s just a personal issue.
So once again, someone who has been there, who has run a company, who has wrestled with health insurance issues on a national scale has come forward with very sane suggestions that are FAR SHORT of any socialized medicine plan. Don’t most rational people believe that working on issues with targeted solutions is a much better approach than a complete destruction of the current set-up with questionable viability of the new solution? Mackey was right. Mackey is right. We should not boycott his stores; we should support them.

And disagreeing with the liberal solution does not make us racists, radicals, or Nazi’s. It makes us sane rational people.