I’m greatly amused over the hippy boycott of their former-favorite grocery store, Whole Foods, over WF CEO John Mackey’s Wall Street Journal Op/Ed on health care reform. Fortunately for all the working stiff WF employees liberals claim to care about, it doesn’t seem to be hurting the company’s bottom line any.
The thing that kills me is that the hippies’ stated goals are to a) increase health care access for all Americans, b) improve the quality of that care, and c) reduce costs of that care. Fair enough – there’s nothing wrong with any of those things as goals, and Mr. Mackey clearly agrees with his disgruntled customers that those goals are desirable. He just has an alternative solution to meet them which he thinks (and knows from experience) will work better than the current proposals bouncing around Congress and the White House. So why the hate?
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a 4th goal – a hidden goal – of giving government more power, authority, and control over all of us rubes who aren’t smart or sophisticated enough to exercise our own freedom and liberty “properly”, and that this goal is threatened by Mr. Mackey’s proposals! Hmmmm…
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The General of the Straw Man Army that the left trots out at every possible debate is the old canard that because Conservatives oppose leftist, big-government solutions to all of society’s problems, we therefore oppose all solutions to society’s problems.
Not only is this ridiculous on its face as a matter of basic logical reasoning, but it’s factually wrong (and more than a little offensive).
Conservatives would love to wave a wand and see everyone have free, unlimited health care. But we understand that there is no such thing as “free”, and that someone has to pay for that care in the end. We also understand that trying to foist such a burden solely on “the rich” will result in a lot less rich people, and a bankrupt health care system which helps nobody. The alternative cost-foisting target – our future generations – will help even fewer people than nobody in the long run.
Conservatives understand that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” solution, and that individual states are the best laboratories to test such Grand Plans. (We also know that so far, the only thing universal about these “solutions” is their failure rate, from Oregon to Tennessee to Washington to Massachusetts to Hawaii to Maine.)
Conservatives tend to have faith in a private health insurance and/or health care provider who is beholden to us personally because they rely on our business for their survival – far more faith than we have in a federal government bureaucrat beholden to no one because there is no relation between their level of service and the size and frequency of their paychecks.
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In short, it’s precisely because we yearn for a health care system with more choices, lower costs, and better access to basic services that Conservatives oppose giant government solutions (and especially giant federal government solutions).
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I don’t begrudge a liberal for disagreeing with me on the solutions to shared goals. But when the reaction against alternative ideas to get where they claim they want to go (and from someone who can boast of actual success in that endeavor!) is so visceral and so absolute and so totally devoid of any serious attempt to refute the merits of those alternatives, you have to wonder if we really share the same goals at all.
Having read the quotes in the ABC article, and then the actual op-ed piece, I have to wonder if those people boycotting Whole Foods actually read what Mr. Mackey wrote at all. Or if they just heard that he was against President Obama’s plan and decided, on that alone, to boycott.
It would have been interesting if the reporter had asked any meaningful questions as to what aspects of Mr. Mackey’s proposal they objected. Which of his ten items were so vile… Making costs transparent? Equalizing tax laws to give individuals the same benefit as corporations?
Of course, I suspect none of them would have an answer so there would be no story other than, “A few people who didn’t look into the matter decided to boycott Whole Foods”.
I agree, SirWhoopass. Having finally read it a few days ago after hearing all this garbage about a boycott, I was stunned. He certainly came at it from the standpoint of a business man making logical decisions in how he wanted to see it work, and perhaps that’s what made them so mad. He didn’t SOUND like them, so he must be opposed to them. It’s a really weird thing that a place that seems to uphold a lot of the ideals of the people boycotting (yeah, I know, it’s never possible to be perfect when you’re a chain store) can so quickly be turned against when the CEO comes out and makes a ton of sense.
Hippies, Sir Whoopass?
What decade are we talking about? I asked the younguns’ around the office if they’d seen any hippies lately.
The response was a lot of blank looks.
Having read the original interview with John Mackey, I was simply surprised that somebody who was supposedly an astute businessman would make such an intemperate and poorly worded statement about a subject that is obviously tapping into what has become, unfortunately, some deeply emotional issues across America …
Seriously, using terms like ‘hippies’ is disingenuous, silly and serves only to distract readers from the real message … that you don’t like government and long to be an island unto yourself, damn the torpedos … or serious illness.
” The alternative cost-foisting target – our future generations – will help even fewer people than nobody in the long run.”
I hope this was an unfortunate editing error…. “fewer than nobody”? Huh? What were you trying to say here?
If the best laboratory for testing health care reform is the states, as you claim, then why would they all be failures?
You’d think, at least one or two would have had a better idea….
Perhaps the problem goes across state boundaries, in this highly transient and mobile society.
I’m happy to hear that you’re happy with your health care providers and their fear that you’ll go elsewhere if they don’t provide acceptable service.
Unfortunately, going elsewhere for health insurance in Nevada isn’t that simple with just two companies commanding the lions share of the market. Hardly a competitive market place, would you say?
This is the same in most other states as well.
And in so far as going to a new doc when the current one fails to deliver … well, that’s kinda tough when you’re dead.
See that’s where health care stands apart from other services… an entirely different level of consequence in response to failure.
There’s a local neurosurgeon currently practicing that has a ‘failure’ rate that is frightening high. Since those figures are not made public available how are consumers to know, and therefore take business elsewhere?
This is what you get under the current ‘fee for service’ system. Under an ‘outcomes’ based system, a poorly performing physician would be cut from the herd.
As a survivor of advanced breast cancer, I can tell you that cancer patients take their relationship with their oncologists seriously … and in all too many cases, I’ve watched terrified patients accept care that is substandard simply because they’re too scared to change and wouldn’t know who to change to.
Again, this is because the current system promotes and supports an almost complete lack of outcome reporting. I know this since I sit on a local hospital cancer committee. It’s criminal. So criminal in fact, that I undertook to facilitate a relationship with the world’s leading cancer center (a not for profit, state sponsored and supported center BTW) to mentor local providers – hopefully toward the end of getting better cancer care in the local area. But this is only a start.
Finally, talking about critics of the current system of health care delivery being ‘visceral’ sort of begs the YouTube evidence of the ‘visceral’ response living almost entirely on the side of those opposing health care reform.
Just a few thoughts on a very complex subject… I won’t take up additional space relating, in detail, just how many ways the current for profit, fee for service system has failed me ( an inaccurate diagnosis made far too late ) and many others.
I hope we can continue this at another time.
I never used the term “hippie”.
Your own comments would seem to support EXACTLY what Mackey was arguing for. Perhaps you read his words with the same care in which you read mine.
You state there are only two insurance options in Nevada. Mackey’s point #3 is “repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines”.
You, quite correctly, point out that performance data on doctors is all but non-existent to the public. Which is coupled with the fact that when your doctor screws up you often don’t get a second chance. I completely agree.
I disagree, however, that a government-run plan would somehow improve this situation. Have you ever known the government to fire an incompetent employee?
You ask how putting the cost of a federal universal health care plan could make things worse? It will make things worse because, while some people cannot afford insurance now, there are 250 million Americans who do have insurance. When both the government and the people are bankrupt then nobody will be covered. That is how it gets worse.
Indeed, Ladybird. Your response constitutes an epic missing of the point. I welcome your comments, but I really must insist that you actually read what I write instead of reading the first sentence and assuming you know what’s in the rest of the post based on whatever stereotype of a “conservative” you carry around with you.
I agree and understand that the problems you report are real and must be addressed. So do most conservatives, which is why conservative proposals like Mackey’s actually attempt to deal with those problems directly and effectively.
Again – we’re trying to get to the same point, at least theoretically. Why the outrage? If you think massive government intervention is the answer, OK – but even if that solution works as advertised, it still fundamentally alters the relationship between government and citizens, substantially infringes upon individual liberty, and demolishes the central Constitutional principle of DEcentralization of government power which will have unintended and unwelcome consequences for generations. That consequence is repugnant to me (and I think most Americans), which is why ObamaCare opponents are so worked up.
So how ’bout trying something a little less destructive first?
States serve as excellent laboratories for all manner of things. This is one of the glories of Federalism. The fact that they ALL fail when they attempt all different types of “universal coverage” (and Canada and Britain besides) is not an opening to double down on a losing bet, it’s a warning to cut your loses and find a better way to spend your money.
My point with the phrase “help less than nobody” is that it will HURT people. It’s a net negative. Obama’s plan will end up with less coverage, especially for seniors, lower quality care, fewer doctors, more cost, etc. Sir Whoopas is right – when the whole system goes bankrupt, as Obama’s deficit spending will inevitably ensure, we’ll ALL be in real trouble. Again, even assuming the system works as advertised and is cost neutral (an unlikely gamble indeed), we’ll all have great health care for a few years until the Chinese come looking to collect the credit card debt Obama has already promised to run up. Then we’re California, literally holding garage sales to try to make ends meet and seriously considering eliminating ALL welfare programs.
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Those who don’t understand that health care is a commodity for which profits will always be demanded and required are simply living in a fantasy world.
These people think that they are owed this service, which means someone else should take care of them and foot the bill – kind of like parents did (or were supposed to) before they reached adulthood. To these folks, the Government should step in where their parents left off, and the loss of liberty in the long run bothers them not a bit. These people are the most “progressive” of the “liberal,” and the insistence on perpetual childhood makes the “hippy” moniker fit to a “T”. The folks organizing the WF boycotts – who have met a rational argument with an irrational personal attack on an individual and his employees – have richly earned this descriptor.
(And if the “young ‘uns” around your office haven’t seen any hippies lately, it’s because they haven’t been paying attention as the Burners roll into town by the bajillion!)
Ladybird,
If I knew nothing about you, but were to guess based on your response, I would assume you possess a great disdain from pretty much everything…especially personal freedom. Are you like our Chairman? – committed to forever changing America? Is it now, today, that we abandon 200+ years of success? Sure, hippies, liberals, or whatever the left calls themselves (ACORN), will argue that this economy, these wars represent the need for change. But it is just like a liberal to extrapolate the moment to cover the whole. Oh, and to pay for that knee-jerk reaction, we dig a pit of debt that no “young’n” will ever be able to out of. Sure, we need to improve the system…IMPROVE, not destroy.
As for Mackey’s article and the subsequent boycott… You hippies, ACORNERs, “never happy or contentists” are a paradox. You fight to be heard, to sound off, then you seek to punish those who do just that. When will you be happy with the fact that America is successful because we CAN and SHOULD disagree. What is it you people (yes, I said “you people”) want? Government to feed you by hand, tell you what to wear, provide you a job, a house, and tell you what to think? If Government takes control of this industry (health care), then what? Oh, American autos are struggling, we’ll just nationalize them…wait, we basically did. Seriously, where do decide to draw the line because this fundamental change that is lurking in health care may end up making delicate personal decisions for you whether you like it or not. You tout your survivor status as well as your relationship with your oncologist, but seems to defend the current system rather than indict it. What are asking for? Do you even understand what Mackey is saying? How can you be so anxious to put ALL of your eggs in one basket after only a couple of months of debate? Let CA, NV, MA, NY, etc take a shot at this. There’s no money for the states to that you say? Well then, where is America’s money?
Have you read the 1700 pages of legislation? Maybe the Chairman will enlighten us on the 9th with his Mad Lib version during the prime time re-education session. Do you know what we are facing? Why is the White House compiling a list of names of those who publish anti-Health Care propaganda? Doesn’t this sound like Germany circa 1930/1940? Why in the land of great debate do we now compile “enemies lists?” Why is the left so content to hinder free speech. Maybe you should look inward and examine what you really think this country means before you lash out.
Until Chairman Zero took over, America has survived much worse than the recession we currently face. However, we are taking such quick steps (without debate due to Dem majorities) that we face a country divided like never before. The simple fact I am dedicating over 20 minutes to respond to you both makes me appreciate America’s “encouraged and necessary right for discourse” and rattles me at the same time. I feel I fighting for the America I grew up in because I suspect you and others are attempting to either reshape or destroy it. I see this Administration as a threat to what used to inspire pride in America. Now, we “blow off” the National Prayer Breakfast and host a special dinner for Muslims because we should be ashamed for how us Christians alienated Islam.
Our way (well, apparently not yours) of life is under a political attack not seen since the days of the Red Scare or Krystalnacht…if we jump into this health care pool without listening to folks like Mackey and honestly hear him out rather than boycott for no other reason than to be unhappy, well, get ready for this divided nation to embrace “actions speak louder than words.”
Good day to you Ladybird.