John Mackey, the co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, lays out eight reforms that would significantly reduce the cost of health care without ballooning the federal debt.
- Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
- Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
- Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
- Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
- Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
- Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
- Enact Medicare reform.
- 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.
I think he’s spot-on with this (and of course, in the piece, he goes into each in more detail); these reforms would remove most of the things that are currently driving up the cost of health care. Mackey goes beyond these as well to offer some additional thoughts and comments; most interesting to me are these, rooted in Whole Foods’ experience.
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.
Absolutely correct. Read the whole thing.
All of Mackey's proposals would cut back on healthcare for everyone but the rich. Costs and be cut, and care could be provided for everyone with single payer. The key is getting the parasitical HMOs and health insurers out of the picture.
I'm not shopping there again until Mackey is gone and until Whole Foods supports single payer.
Not true at all, as experience has shown when such things have been tried.
Actually, I have to add another comment to that, because your comment shows that you haven't even read the post, or Mackey's article. How could you possibly object to cost transparency in health care, and how is that supposed to be bad for the poor? Or allowing people to get health care from an insurer outside their state if the ones in their state aren't very good? Or increasing tax benefits for health insurance? How are any of those things supposed to be bad for everyone but the rich?
Not only is your assertion unfounded, it appears to be offered without even having read what you're criticizing. (As such, you now qualify for a Democratic nomination to Congress.)
Urgh, I have lived in Canada and I shudder at the thought of ever subjecting my special needs child to the proposed system. Should he ever have a catatrophic shunt failure… uh, don't even want to think about it!
I would definitely love to be able to support health care for the poor through donations, and transparency is never bad, except in the case of clothing at a beer belly competition.
(Don't you just love talking points?)
Oh, you're bad . . . that last image of yours–I just about lost my drink. 🙂 Otherwise, I agree with you.