WholeFoods CEO on Health Care Reform

[stef_tm]

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, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

Read the rest here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html

Comments

[writerspleasure.livejournal.com]

amen.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_whole_foods_healthcare_plan_now_with_80_more_conspicuously_consuming_wh/

[eta] Oh wait, this is John Mackey.  Even better!

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[titania82.livejournal.com]

I had to post the link to my facebook. The details were something that I strongly echo!

As someone involved in the pop version of statistics on a daily basis (Six Sigma)- and based on all the training classes I've been submitted to- the Congress/President are clearly solving the wrong problem. Its as if they skipped the define phase of their project.

Solve the problem of why exactly it costs over $5K for a low risk woman to birth a child and then you might be able to make some inferences about what should be done as far as health care reform is concerned.

[stef-tm.livejournal.com]

Hyman mentions Demming!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/why-health-reform-will-fa_b_248986.html

[hopeforyou.livejournal.com]

Not completely happy with his response. Even if people take care of themselves, there will always be people who have medical problems that do not necessarily come about due to lifestyle choice or where the connection is yet undetermined, such as IBS, Fibromyalgia, CFS, and asthma.

There is a growing number of conditions for which no-one knows the cause, and these should be covered, especially for people who are disabled and cannot work the 30 hour minimum at his store and for whom the $2500 deductible is difficult to pay and the $1800 annual FSA only covers a fraction of their annual copays because the drugs they need are expensive. Those employees who are carefully spending their $2500 are doing so because their hourly wage can barely support them in San Francisco, or whatever yuppie suburb their Whole Foods is based.

I think people should be able to get health care with preexisting conditions and without it being attached to employment. This stifles disabled people from being entrepreneurial and self-employed to work the hours they can work with the mobility and limitations they have.

I'd like to see this change. I'd also like to see people stop getting married just to get health insurance on their partner's plan. As a single woman who may never get married again, I think this practice is social favouritism towards marriage and discriminates against singles. I also think that if you take care of your ailing mother or your post-college adult child who is ill or your live-in boyfriend/girlfriend, you should be able to put them on your insurance as your dependent.

[markolas.livejournal.com]

That's a really nasty little article. I knew when he started off with the Margaret Thatcher quote that I wasn't going to like the rest of what he had to say.

I'm sorry, but I've had all the libertarian anti-healthcare BS I can stand.