Monday, August 17, 2009

Whole Foods CEO Bashes Obama's Health Reform

Did liberals think that Whole Foods was not a corporation because it sells organic food? You won't see me in Whole Foods. But Whole Foods is overpriced and pretentious if you ask me. Now, if Trader Joe's came out swinging against Obama's health care plan, I'd probably still shop at Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's gives all of its workers health care, even the part timers.
Apparently, John Mackey tried to take it back. Mackey, unlike Obama, doesn't believe health care is a right. Mackey also doesn't believe food and shelter is right. He also slams Britain's and Canada's health care. Here's what he said in a WSJ op-ed:
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. 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. Read the whole thing
I do agree with him on this, even though he's promoting his stores:
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.
Preventative health care is the best health care.