Whole Foods’ (aka “Whole Paycheck”) CEO and Platinum-Card Narcissist, John Mackey wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal that enumerated “eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit”. Before I address some of the points Mackey makes in his piece, I would like to point out that I am the perfect example of Mackey’s biggest customer: a health-conscious, ecologically-minded, upper-middle class consumer who prefers organic and humane farming practices to traditional supermarket offerings; someone who has been touting a “green” lifestyle long before it was de rigeur; and someone who doesn’t mind spending a little more for locally-grown produce or the nice choice of bakery and prepared foods available at Whole Paycheck.
Mackey’s list reads like the Republican Playbook of Healthcare. Why would he want to alienate his core constituency – humanitarians, hippies, vegetarians, macrobiotic dieters, Budhhists, and well-heeled liberals? Why would he pander to the people who are least likely to shop at his stores? Is this a new marketing strategy?
Mackey described himself in 2005 as “a businessman and a free market libertarian” and has made campaign contributions to libertarian candidates, according to public records. Yet, despite this admission of libertarianism, Mackey has made no comments on record (that I can find after an exhaustive search) that condemn the invasion of Iraq, the obscene war-profiteering of companies like Haliberton and Blackwater, or of the TARP bailout last September; all of which contributed exponentially to the national debt and deficits.
He did spend a lot of time on Yahoo chat rooms using an anonymous handle that promoted the financial health of Whole Foods and undermined his main competition, Wild Oats. (See this article for more background on that bizarre revelation.)
My problem with Mackey, besides his politics and hypocrisy, is his ill-informed and bad ideas he promotes in order to undermine the single-payer plan Obama and most of the voters want on the table for health care reform.
Mackey promotes Health Savings Accounts (a product I never sell because it’s a bad deal overall and the tax advantages are not worth it), changes in tort laws (pro-business, anti-victim), allowing individuals to get tax breaks on premiums (tax breaks already exist for people paying their own health insurance), making health insurance like “cafeteria” benefits for the consumer to decide “what is covered” and not the law. Great idea. I guess I’ll take my chances, opt out of breast cancer coverage, and then am SOL when I get it, right? I’ll opt out of maternity coverage and then, with my luck, get pregnant and have to pay for it, right? How ridiculous.
Mackey writes:
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.
That’s essentially how medical insurance has worked for the past 50 years, leaving millions uninsured, millions of claims denied, millions of consumers going bankrupt over medical expenses, and making health insurance the *least* competitive, least transparent and least fair product available to us through the free market. It’s not a free market. It’s rigged.
Many bloggers and columnists have expressed outrage over Mackey’s callous and cold-blooded plan, a plan that will not be part of any health care bills in a Democratic legislature. But, what is more outrageous than his homage to profit and his ultimately fascist worldview is his stupidity in alienating his main constiuency. I, and millions of other Whole Paycheck customers, will now be boycotting his store. I hope this is an expensive lesson to Mackey, because the most expensive, thus most painful lessons are the ones we remember.
