Here’s an unlikely object of hate for the American Left: Whole Foods. Yes, that Whole Foods. It is ironic because for years Whole Foods has had the image of being a left-wig grocery chain because it sells only organic food, a left-wing cause, offers generous benefits (including health care) unlike the perceived Republican Wal-Mart and Whole Foods is mostly a chain in liberal American states. Barack Obama was accused of being a liberal elites when he referred to the price of arugula at Whole Foods during the campaign.
Simply put: Whole Foods was seen as a progressive store upholding the best of liberal values. Or so the progressives thought...
Liberal are turning against Whole Foods and calling for a boycott because its co-founder and CEO John Mackey recently pined an op-ed in the right-of-center Wall Street Journal that opposed Barack Obama’s health care proposal and even started off with a quote by Margaret Thatcher. Mackey wrote that Obama’s heath care proposal was simply unaffordable:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
—Margaret Thatcher
With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.
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, the United States should move toward free market reform. Mackey outlined many of the things I have been writing about such as removing mandates and allowing for inter-state competition:
• 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.
And Mackey went after one of the Democrat’s main special interest: trail lawyers:
• 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.
Besides calling Obama’s plan a path toward bankruptcy and going after a Democrat special-interest group, Mackey also went after the outrageous claim that liberals make that people have a “right” to health care. No one has a right to demand that his neighbor pay for benefits. Mackey goes after this anti-freedom belief:
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
Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care.
Why do not even nations like Canada accord a “right,” because government health care leads to rationing and if these socialists believed in such a “right” then they would never ration health. But, alas they do:
...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.
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. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.
These are statistics Americans need to hear. I recently wrote about the horrors of Canadian health care after listening to a Canadian woman at the libertarian Cato Institute:
She spoke about how Canada is under a rationing system with over 700,000 Canadians - out of a population of 33 million - are currently on a list waiting surgery because of a lack of skilled physicians. 17% [something like that, I forget the exact figure] of the Canadian public are awaiting a simply meeting with a primary care doctor. This is what government-managed health care does.
She spoke out the case of a Canadian man from Ontario who had head injuries and went to his doctor requesting an MRI scan. The doctor told him he would need to wait 4 MONTHS [!!!] for a simply scan that in an American hospital would be done on demand. The reason is that Canadian ranks in the bottom of OECD nations in the quantity of MRI scans. The man drove into Buffalo, New York and got his MRI scan and it turned out he had a brain tumor. He then went back with the scans to his Canadian doctor whom told him that there was a 4 MONTH [!!!] wait for neurosurgery. He did not wait and got the operation in New York. Imagine if he had to wait 8 months? He credits the [partly; I’ll get to this later] free market U.S. health industry for saving his life.
He was lucky, the speaker’s own mother died of colon cancer awaiting treatment in a Canada that has debased human life through its rationing system. This is what the state does when it controls our health. We are left to the whim of a impersonal bureaucrat.
She spoke about a woman in Alberta, a major center in Canada, who had to fly to a relatively small-town in Montana to deliver quintuples because while her larger city did not have a specialist a small Montana town did. Canadians are lucky, as the speaker explained, they have an exitvalue: the United States. Europeans are not so lucky.
But Obama may end decent health care for both Americans and Canadians with one swipe with his effort to destroy private health insurance.
Instead of engaging in debate with Mackey, the left-wing is engaging in the similar mob tactics that accuse opponents of Obama of partaking in when they shout down speakers. Republicans may seek to silence pro-ObamaCare politicians through shouts, but the Left seeks the same end - silencing opponents - but just adopts a different tactic: boycott.
The Left is organizing a boycott of Whole Foods to punish Mackey for his opinions:
...the Progressive Review, an online alternative publication, is calling for a formal boycott, and campaigns are popping up all over, including on Facebook, a popular online social networking site.
Protesters are hoping a boycott will cut into the success of Whole Foods, the 10th largest food and drug store in the U.S., which reported sales of $1.8 billion for the last quarter, a 2 percent increase from the previous quarter.
As of Saturday, the Whole Foods Internet forum had more than 4,000 postings. One commenter thanked Mackey for revealing his political views.
“While it was a horrible business move, it was a great courtesy,” a commenter identified as boycottwf wrote. “Now, I know that my dollars spent at whole foods are going to fund your misguided conservative views.”
The commenter added, “Until you publically apologize to the nation and pledge that you will provide better benefits to your employees, I will not spend another dime at your store.”
Another commenter identified as Betrayed, who claims to have been a customer for nearly 20 years, said, “I was so shocked to read Mr. Mackey’s horrible, horrible opinion in the WSJ. I hope this severely hurts his profits. His customer base is mostly liberal Democrats who will, like me, be horrified at what we have been supporting all this time.”
Of course, people who disagree with the views of a CEO can take their business elsewhere. This is a free society. But the intention is clear here: silencing opponents of ObamaCare.
And what is it that Mackey said which is so objectionable? It is so wrong to worry about the fiscal health of the United States? So wrong to worry about American being bankrupt? So wrong to worry about health rationing and millions of Americans on a waiting list? So wrong to believe in the Constitution? The fact that the Left considers such statements offensive should tell you all you need to know about their plans for health care.
