Saturday, October 31, 2009

Natural Food Fight: Obamacare vs. Mackeycare



In August, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey argued in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that the solution to America's health care crisis was to be found in "less government control and more individual empowerment." His own company's unique health care plan, Mackey wrote, covers 90 percent of employees, costs less than health insurance plans, aned provides a "very high degree of worker satisfaction." But for the sin of not supporting a government take over of health care, labor unions and left-wing activists called for a boycott of Whole Foods, claiming that Mackey's solutions were unworkable and his employees were unhappy.

Reason.tv talked to protesters, Mackey, and employees about "the Whole Foods alternative to ObamaCare."

Thanks to Art Little.


8 Comments:

At 10/31/2009 11:30 PM, Blogger W.E. Heasley said...

Hence Fiction (protestors) can be stranger than Fact (Whole Foods Health Insurance Plan).

Keeping that thought in mind, the “Jobs Saved” political speak term, the ultimate non-statistic statistic (Fiction), can be stranger than (Fact) which is a 16%Real Unemployment Rate.

Go figure!

 
At 10/31/2009 11:44 PM, Blogger KO said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 10/31/2009 11:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

One of the fundamental issues hiding under the health care area is who do you trust least government or big business? Most posters here would answer government, but one can find blogs, that say the goal of big business is to bankrupt their customers and reduce them to slavery(extreme but true). Clearly if you trust big business less then government solutions are to be preferred.
The third way of self reliance is no longer possible, as we have moved from subsistence farming where this was possible. How many of us could grow our own food, get our fuel, let alone health care without involving one of the two groups above?

 
At 10/31/2009 11:46 PM, Blogger KO said...

That video was pretty charitable to the protestors. Many of the other ones I've seen show how mindless many of them were, on top of their ignorance.

Check on Youtube for part 5 of John Stossel's Sick in America show. That has a more in depth overview of Whole Food's program from 2007.

Also see this month old story from Reuters on the satisfaction with HSA's.

One startling fact for anyone who's familiar with how fast insurance costs have been rising:

"Of the employers offering HSAs for more than three years, 86 percent indicated that plan costs were the same or less than the previous year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS94460+24-Sep-2009+BW20090924

 
At 10/31/2009 11:55 PM, Blogger KO said...

Geez anon, think for yourself much? Some blogs make some ridiculous statements and you fall in line?

You frankly probably need government to control your life. One fundamental flaw in your theory is no one is required to keep buying anything from any big business. So if you go bankrupt buying things from big businesses it's your fault.

But even that is demonstrably wrong anyway. How is it that GE, Coke, Ford, Proctor and Gamble, Heinz, Hershey's, and countless other big businesses haven't bankrupted and enslaved generations of Americans? Or have they and I just didn't notice.

 
At 11/01/2009 12:10 AM, Blogger Ryan said...

I would like to see if Whole Foods has a company wide survey where employees rank their health insurance quality, which could then be compared to other companies.

Also they never specifically gave out numbers, rather they simply said Whole Foods offers the same level of insurance but at a lower costs. Numbers would have been really nice here.

However I have to say, like almost always I agree with Reason.tv

 
At 11/01/2009 9:09 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

MJ

Here is the link to a Darth Vader hyper-inflation video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbPLdup_kDE

Enjoy

 
At 11/02/2009 10:28 AM, Anonymous Rand said...

Since Richard did not know how to create a link, I did it for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbPLdup_kDE

Enjoy the video.

 

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