John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc. can answer your questions better than I.  I believe he offers up some pretty sound ideas.  Just try to climb out from behind your partisan facade and consider his proposals.

John Mackey wrote:

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:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health
insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of
high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of
our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums
for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team
members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800
per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees’ Personal
Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team
members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is
covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to
spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical
health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and
individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health
insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not.
This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across
state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from
any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever
we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These
mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is
insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer
preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance
costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to
us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments
cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that
total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much
they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is
heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient
empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary,
tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and
aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program.

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.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are
currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a
report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8
million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the
company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit
preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can
control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would
they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an
“intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in
either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root
causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is
responsible for his or her own health.

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.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential
that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors
and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices.
We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that
responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices
that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a
vibrant and sustainable American society.

—Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

jesusluvspegging wrote:

I propose we gut the DOD, pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq within one year, shut down some foreign military bases and sell them back to the countries they're in.

There's your trillion dollars.

Don't forget tort reform. There are so many many other options to look at besides the one that is currently available. I can't believe any hard working citizen does not recognize this as a very half assed attempt at health care reform.

The entire concept is based on punishing the middle class while protecting the revenue stream of our friend, the attorney. If this system is so fucked up as everyone claims, don't you think it would take more than six months to come up with an alternative approach? It is one of the biggest tasks of this presidency and he farms it out to congress in the hopes of crossing off  an item on his "to do" list as soon as possible.

Half assed is a VERY nice way of putting it. Let's hope he puts more time into this and other decisions and his policies don't turn out to be the equivalent of Taco Bell food.

Last edited by Banjo (2009-09-03 18:34:35)

Banjo wrote:

Don't forget tort reform.

I think any health care reform, to be successful, is gonna need a big dose of this.

phreddy wrote:

The only reason it has taken this long is because the Republicans and and a handful of Dems who stood up to Pelosi and Reed have dug in their heels.

. . . at the bidding of health insurance campaign contributors.

Some of Mackey's proposals have merit, but others would be harmful (e.g., eliminating regulation of what is covered).  However, they do nothing to ensure that health insurance will be available to everyone, and I see no mention of the easiest issue (preexisting conditions).  His proposal to allow tax-form check-off donations to help the uninsured is laughable.  He is obviously fond of HSAs, although many critics argue that HSAs are of little value to low paid workers, and again would do nothing for the uninsured.

His foray into constitutional argument is puzzling.  What brought that on? 

He fails to address the problem that health care costs are eating us alive and will continue to do so without a plan to make sure that many more people are insured and then regulating the health care and insurance industry to keep costs down.  The most effective way to do that would be single payer, and I know Phred and Banjoid would love to go that route.  Unfortunately, it is not in the cards, so the next best thing would be to have a public option, which also looks unlikely. 

Now, because I don't want to sit at my computer all evening, I bow out.

phreddy wrote:

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc. can answer your questions better than I.  I believe he offers up some pretty sound ideas.  Just try to climb out from behind your partisan facade and consider his proposals.

This would be the same Mr. Mackey who dumped my ex-wife off of pay-rolls (and thus insurance) while she was in intensive care last year?  Nice Phreddy....good choice of examples.  That fucker is a prime example of those who are looking for a way to make money out of this.

Let me tell you the outcome of that little insureance nightmare Phreddy - my fucking uber-capitalist Hedge Fund bosses added her to our insurance so she wouldn't have to go on medicare. 

Phreddy, you are a complete and total ass - you have been around here long enough that you knew about all of that and you choose that for an example.  If you would have spouted that in a face to face conversation I would have broken your fucking nose.

I used to think you were just stubborn and brainwashed, I must admit that I greatly over-estimated you.


/thread

Ooh-rah, Jarhead.

Well it has been a fun afternoon chatting with those of you who are coherent.  It's even fun chatting Em.  If only I could be there to watch the veins on his forehead pop out.

I am off on a 10 day vacation, so everyone have a good time, and remember, your mom and dad have worked hard to provide you this room, high speed connection and your computer, so do something nice for them today.
Adios.

If ever a thread merited piss porn, this one does.  Why have you forsaken us, Jesus?

Oh, hell, my bad.

Lessons in crowd control by, evidently, one of our more erudite senators.

Does any-body else re-call the drunk driving skit that Franken and Davis did on "Saturday Night Live" about thirty years a-go?  It was hilarious.  I was hoping to find it on the YouTubes; But, knew "going-in" that I was pushing my luck.