Written by Paul J. Poposky
Sunday, 27 September 2009
The problem with a "free-market" solution to health care is that it kills 60 Americans every day.
John MackeyIn an August 12 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare," John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Markets, joined former 2008 Republican presidential candidate and congressman from Texas Ron Paul in calling for a "free market" solution to health care reform based on "personal responsibility," "choice," and "freedom." In his editorial, Mackey calls for the de-regulation of the insurance industry and argues against supporters of health care for all as a human right. He writes:
"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... [H]ealth 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...[T]his 'right' has never existed in America."
Some may find it odd that a man who made his fortune promoting healthy living, locally-grown produce, "fair" trade and marketing an eco-friendly image should come out for a far-right wing approach to health care. However, a brief examination of his company's history makes the picture a lot more clear.
Whole Foods is a trendy grocer with a known history of union busting, lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act, freezing wages and bullying employees into high-deductible health savings accounts which place the bulk of the cost of health care on the workers themselves. Whole Foods caters to upper-income clientele and offers a selection of high-end organic meat and produce well outside the budget of most American workers, including the company's own employees. Perhaps this is why John Mackey doesn't seem to "get it."
Protest against Whole FoodsThe comments from Whole Foods' libertarian CEO have set off a chain reaction of protests outside of Whole Foods locations, online petitions and blogosphere replies, nationwide boycotts and even a tea-party-led counter "buycott," throwing fuel on the fire that is the health care debate.
In a time of economic crisis, where we see an ever-increasing number of workers losing employer-provided benefits due to layoffs or are putting off seeking medical care for the same reasons, it should come as no surprise that Facebook's "Boycott Whole Foods" group page gained over 33,000 members little more than a month after Mackey's article first appeared.
This year has already been a roller coaster ride for Americans concerned with the ongoing debate over health care reform. Since early 2009, supporters of fundamental changes to the American health care system have witnessed single-payer reform taken "off the table" by congressional Democrats whose insurance industry-friendly, Obama-backed proposals have failed to inspire confidence or widespread support from the masses of workers and young people who mobilized to elect Obama last fall. Many have been appalled by the repeated reports in the corporate media of far-right groups disrupting town hall meetings and intimidating health care reform supporters -- in some cases resorting to violence. Obama and his allies are retreating fast from their proposed "public option," which appears less and less likely to make the final cut in any legislation to reach the president's desk.
Facing a continuing economic crisis and the prospect of a jobless "recovery," US workers just can't afford to gamble with more of the same free market "solutions" to the problems we face. In recent years, many of these problems have been transformed from being a question of living standards to a question of survival. Before the recession even began, over 37 million people in the US were living hungry and nearly 18,000 died each year because they did not have access to health care.
The total annual deaths attributed to the current health care system increases to over 80,000 when you count those who have purchased insurance but are either denied coverage or avoid necessary treatment due to financial hardship and high co-pays. This amounts to something like 60 people dying in the US every day because they could not afford health coverage. Add to those figures the mass of Americans who lost their jobs and homes in the past two years and Mr. Mackey's market exchanges don't look so "mutually beneficial" anymore.
Mackey's Wall Street Journal op-ed attempts to make a case for the de-regulation of the health insurance industry, including an end to mandates on what insurance companies are required to cover. He seems to hold the view that if insurance companies were allowed to sell any product they wanted to without restriction, and health insurance customers had more "choice," then somehow, through the "magic" of the free market, we'd all be just hunky-dory.
Let's give Mr. Mackey the benefit of the doubt and assume he has probably never had the experience of being denied coverage on a necessary or life-saving treatment because of pre-existing conditions or due to inability to pay out-of-pocket fees. Let's also assume he's never been dropped by an insurer because his poor health made him an unprofitable client. Any one of the millions of Americans who has a personal or family experience dealing with this monstrous, abusive and downright murderous for-profit health care system and the corporate "death panels" used by profit-driven insurers to drop sick patients could tell you that more de-regulation is the last thing we need!
The Obama Administration has lately been choosing words like "choice," "competition" and "shared responsibility" to market its proposals for health insurance reform to the American public. This sounds more like the free market status quo than real "change." More and more Americans are beginning to smell a rat in the sweetheart deals between Obama and the Democrats and the big insurance, hospital and pharmaceutical companies, such as legal mandates forcing individuals to purchase insurance from private insurers or face fines.
Obama and healthcareIt is now an evident fact that Obama's proposals will not truly guarantee universal coverage and quality health care for all. No wonder more people are beginning to look to single-payer as the only reform that can guarantee quality affordable health care to all.
Since the vast majority of the Democratic Party has never gotten on board to support single-payer, as represented in Congressman John Conyers' HR676 or Senator Bernie Sanders' SB703, single-payer activists and supporters from organized labor, the health care profession, concerned citizens and outraged patients have begun to organize rallies for genuine health care reform in towns and major cities including Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Louisville, Detroit and D.C. At Labor Day parades across the country, activists from groups like Labor for Single-Payer and Health Care NOW! distributed literature and petitions. The "Mad As Hell Doctors" launched a nationwide tour to spread the word about why we need single-payer, universal health care. Richard Trumka, recently elected as the new president of the AFL-CIO at the labor federation's September convention, has come out solidly in support of single-payer. In fact, the AFL-CIO as a whole has unanimously now endorsed single-payer. It is time to put these words into action!
While these are promising signs that supporters of real health care reform are organizing and mobilizing, it is of great importance that we continue to raise the demand in our unions that Labor break with the Democrats and establish a mass party of Labor to fight for key demands like full-employment at a living wage, affordable quality housing, education, and the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as single-payer. These are basic demands the Democrats have proven time and time again they simply will not -- and cannot -- fight for. Labor must take the lead in these struggles by mobilizing the rank and file and building a party of its own to fight for the interests of the working class majority in this country.
The Democrats' plan to subsidize private insurers and mandate purchase of insurance benefits is not a step toward a single-payer system for universal coverage. The far-right's schemes to cut taxes for the rich, privatize Medicare, de-regulate the insurance industry and make access to health care a "personal responsibility" is also clearly a step backward.
John Mackey opened his editorial with a quote from the former-Conservative British Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." Of course, Mackey included this infamous quote because he, being quite financially secure himself after years of exploiting the labor of others, believes he is entitled not only to his ill-gotten gains but also to lecture the rest of us on why we shouldn't have universal access to quality health care. That is, unless we can afford to shop at Mr. Mackey's fancy grocery store!
The free market got us into this mess and no free market "solutions" can possibly get us out of it. The for-profit nature of our current health care system is what is really making people sick, not the majority of Americans Mr. Mackey implies are "irresponsible." Proposals like Whole Foods' free market alternative to health care reform will just make this nation even sicker! We need a working class solution to a problem that most adversely affects workers!
Democrats dance in the streets and declare success. An ABC News-Washington Post poll released on October 18, 2009, found that only twenty percent of the population defines themselves Republican. Progressive assert this result will work in the their favor if the public option is to pass. However, the now ecstatic portion of the electorate discounts the "disconnect" discussed in the aforementioned study and also addressed in a Pew Research Center report published only a week earlier. The overjoyed overlooked the Independents (42%), the leaner's, Left and Right (39%), and the less than inspirational number who proclaim themselves proud Democrats (33%). For these individuals, the topic of health care reform is a complex issue. Trust in Congress is near nil. People are engaged in the subject, albeit a bit overwhelmed. Sixty-six percent (66%) say they do not understand the proposed policies. Personal matters move most people, more so than Party politics does. Possibly, that is the problem, or the predicament that precludes authentic medical insurance reform in America.
The boycott of Whole Foods we helped spur a couple weeks ago continues to gain new members. And now the UFCW is involved:
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and CtW Investment Group, an arm of several unions including the Service Employees International Union, are part of the boycott effort and say Mackey should be ousted as CEO of the grocery chain.
They also are pushing for the Bravo cable network, owned by NBC Universal-General Electric, to drop Whole Foods as the sponsor of its popular “Top Chef” show.
CtW also pushed for the ouster of Ken Lewis at Bank of America. The UFCW has fought with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Whole Foods and Bashas Inc. over unionization efforts.
"Mr. Mackey attempted to capitalize on the brand reputation of Whole Foods to champion his personal political views, but has instead deeply offended a key segment of Whole Foods consumer base," CtW Investment Group's Executive Director Bill Patterson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is part of Change to Win, said it will be giving out information to Whole Foods shoppers about health care reform. The group said Mackey's op-ed was an "attempt to undermine Obama's health-care reform."
A Facebook group created to get spread the word on the boycott now has almost 30,000 members (update: mark hit). Help them to that mark if you can.
Update:The New York Times reports on a picket at the grand opening of a new Whole Foods in New York.
(h/t HouseOfProgress in Quick Hits)<!--Session data-->
The Whole Foods Boycott, now nearing 15,000 members on Facebook alone, is putting financial pressure on the grocery company. Monday the stock took a big drop but partly rebounded during today's trading. That is, before CNN ran a story critical of CEO John Mackey at 5 p.m.
The company was already under some stress before the boycott, according to CNN:
Whole Foods, like most other retailers, has struggled to grow its sales through the recession as consumers..... clamped down on their spending or shift more of their purchases to lower-priced offerings.....
Michelle Chang, analyst with investment research firm Morningstar, said the company has been struggling with declining store sales for the past three quarters.
They've been trying to lose their high-price image, said Chang. She said the retailer's acquisition of rival Wild Oats in 2007 also was a "costly endeavor" and its international expansion hasn't been as successful as it had hoped.
So it probably wasn't a great time for the CEO to alienate most of his customers.
"Whole Foods relies heavily on its brand and image," Chang said. "Any concern about its image would damage sales heavily."
"Whole Foods holds a certain appeal to consumers and if it deviates from that it could see some negative reaction from consumers," she said.
The above quotes are from the meat of the story, the lead is even more devastating:
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey is known for his tendency to shoot from the hip.
This time, Mackey may have shot himself -- and his company's brand -- in the foot by getting too personal on the very public issue of health care reform which has sparked calls to boycott the grocer.
"Certainly when our customers tell us they are unhappy to extent that they are boycotting our stores, we are concerned," said Libba Letton, spokeswoman for Whole Foods. "We don't want them to leave us."
So this story ran at 5 p.m. today right during after hours trading. Guess what happened to Whole Foods (WFMI) stock? Details inside.
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey has struck a nerve with his anti-worker, anti-common good, failed libertarian arguments in the Wall Street Journal. It's important that we push back hard against this CEO ideologue who seems intent on joining the right wing noise machine.
Mackey is essentially promoting a bankrupt free market philosophy as the anecdote to a failing public commons. It's been known for quite a while to those of us who have worked in and around the food industry that Whole Foods' CEO is anti-union and anti-consumer co-op. Yet many advocates of natural and organic foods and many progressives and liberals have continued to support Whole Foods with their dollars.
After I moved back to NJ from Minneapolis I patronized Whole Foods for their meats even though I knew from interviews with Whole Foods butchers and meat cutters in Minnesota and Texas that Whole Foods feed lots much of their beef at the end of their life cycle -- even the natural and organic cuts. And I always shook my head at the lack of locally sourced produce, fruits, eggs and dairy at Whole Foods, even in a Garden State like New Jersey.
But what choice did I have in winter and early spring? New Jersey lacks the great collection of local food co-ops that Minnesota boasts and the resources for locally raised chicken and pork like southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa. And Whole Foods is a pleasant shopping experience. Many of the smaller Whole Foods have a great market feel to them, and Whole Foods' stores are well merchandised, exceptionally clean, and make great use of lighting. Rather than overwhelming you with signage, the flow and format of the stores guides you to where you need to be.
It's a good place to shop from a merchandising perspective. However, Mackey and Whole Foods fail to live up to their mission statement and fail to fully respect the lnterdependent Web of Life of which we are all a part.
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist, Whole Foods Shopper, and founder of the Interdependence Project has a must read essay on our collective responsibilities to one another and John Mackey's failure to embody this in his Wall Street Journal commentary. Nichtern writes:
"the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true communally.
If John Mackey wants to take his failed libertarian ideals and his Whole Foods brand into battle against President Obama and meaningful healthcare reform than I say bring it on. Not only will we fight you on the healthcare front, we'll extend the battle to EFCA and workers rights and right on into agriculture and organic standards.
We'll fight hard to get back to a true free market economy where an abundance of farmers, local markets, small businesses and regional chains supply locally raised and grown foods to our tables. We'll fight hard for a free market economy where butchers and food workers make middle class wages and can afford to live in pleasant communities with good schools, good libraries, and abundant recreational opportunities. And we'll fight hard for collective bargaining and the right to organize to ensure that butchers and other workers earn middle class wages and are treated with dignity and respect.
Our public commons have been failing for a long-time because of people like John Mackey. It's time we became the change we believe in and not let failed libertarian ideals and naked corporate greed hijack our opportunity to move the nation forward.
Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey has struck a nerve with his anti-worker, anti-common good, failed libertarian arguments in the Wall Street Journal. It's important that we push back hard against this CEO ideologue who seems intent on joining the right wing noise machine.
Mackey is essentially promoting a bankrupt free market philosophy as the anecdote to a failing public commons. It's been known for quite a while to those of us who have worked in and around the food industry that Whole Foods' CEO is anti-union and anti-consumer co-op. Yet many advocates of natural and organic foods and many progressives and liberals have continued to support Whole Foods with their dollars.
After I moved back to NJ from Minneapolis I patronized Whole Foods for their meats even though I knew from interviews with Whole Foods butchers and meat cutters in Minnesota and Texas that Whole Foods feed lots much of their beef at the end of their life cycle -- even the natural and organic cuts. And I always shook my head at the lack of locally sourced produce, fruits, eggs and dairy at Whole Foods, even in a Garden State like New Jersey.
But what choice did I have in winter and early spring? New Jersey lacks the great collection of local food co-ops that Minnesota boasts and the resources for locally raised chicken and pork like southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa. And Whole Foods is a pleasant shopping experience. Many of the smaller Whole Foods have a great market feel to them, and Whole Foods' stores are well merchandised, exceptionally clean, and make great use of lighting. Rather than overwhelming you with signage, the flow and format of the stores guides you to where you need to be.
It's a good place to shop from a merchandising perspective. However, Mackey and Whole Foods fail to live up to their mission statement and fail to fully respect the lnterdependent Web of Life of which we are all a part.
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist, Whole Foods Shopper, and founder of the Interdependence Project has a must read essay on our collective responsibilities to one another and John Mackey's failure to embody this in his Wall Street Journal commentary. Nichtern writes:
"the Buddhist teachings on the truth of interdependence don't allow us to stop at the level of individual health and wellbeing. The more we pay attention to reality, the more we see the total impossibility of taking care of our own bodies and minds without taking care of others. The more we see interdependence -- that our lives do not happen in a vacuum, separate from the lives of others -- the more we realize that our own health is inextricably bound up with the health of others. If you are healthier, then I am healthier, and vice versa. This is true physically, this is true psychologically, and this is true communally.
If John Mackey wants to take his failed libertarian ideals and his Whole Foods brand into battle against President Obama and meaningful healthcare reform than I say bring it on. Not only will we fight you on the healthcare front, we'll extend the battle to EFCA and workers rights and right on into agriculture and organic standards.
We'll fight hard to get back to a true free market economy where an abundance of farmers, local markets, small businesses and regional chains supply locally raised and grown foods to our tables. We'll fight hard for a free market economy where butchers and food workers make middle class wages and can afford to live in pleasant communities with good schools, good libraries, and abundant recreational opportunities. And we'll fight hard for collective bargaining and the right to organize to ensure that butchers and other workers earn middle class wages and are treated with dignity and respect.
Our public commons have been failing for a long-time because of people like John Mackey. It's time we became the change we believe in and not let failed libertarian ideals and naked corporate greed hijack our opportunity to move the nation forward.
Some new developments today in the Whole Foods boycott. The purpose, to reiterate, is a show of support for real health care reform and to oppose the Whole Foods CEO who wrote an editorial favoring pretty much the opposite of what we'd like to see in health care policy.
Here are the newest developments: 1) a demonstration at Whole Foods headquarters in Austin today. A couple dozen sign-carrying demostrators came out to agitate for the cause, bringing the boycott right to corporate headquaters. Some local media coverage will likely result.
The other new development concerns the boycott Facebook page which is nearing 10,000 members. It needs just over 500 more members to hit that milestone. Here is a link to it, please help spead the word and get it over the mark. Tomorrow could be a pivotal day. It may be the day Wall Street traders really notice the story. Two publications, the Motley Fool and The Business Insider, ran stories late Friday and this weekend respectively. They took a mostly pro-business stance, not surprisingly, but it served to bring the controversy to investors attention. Fox News was the latest national media outlet to run a story.
The Whole Foods boycott we helped initiate with a post late Wednesday night finally got a response from the company this evening. I'll respond more fully tomorrow with a post here which I'll cross post at the Big Orange Satan. But here are a few things to chew on in the meantime:
1. The apology doesn't come from CEO John Mackey but from the PR team at Whole Foods. It's kind of a "sorry our CEO is an asshat" kind of thing.
2. The PR folks say he was just giving his opinion on health care not Whole Foods' opinion but then they go on to defend his opinion. Huh? When I give my own personal opinion I don't have a PR team which doesn't represent me then go and defend me.
3.They blame the WSJ editors for a misleading headline which made it seem like it was a Whole Foods' position, not just Mackey's but a) Mackey's piece included Whole Foods' health plan as an alternative solution and b) was invited into the WSJ because it was written by the Whole Foods CEO, not just some citizen named John Mackey. In short, their headline was not surprising. And it was clear from the piece he was not a fan of almost every health care reform element the President has advocated.
4. You can't have it both ways. You can't have a CEO against real health care reform, using his CEO status to write high profile opinion pieces, and at the same time say "sorry, it's just his personal opinion. Please keep shopping here because we're a progressive store and many of our employees have tattoos even if our CEO wears an ass-shaped hat."
5. "Coincidentally" this apology comes just as Wall Street noticed the boycott. A piece ran this evening on Motley Fool, a widely read report on stock trading which is affiliated with CNN.com's Money section.In after hours trading the stock continued it's downward fall and finished the day down 2%, a sizable one day drop. The Dow fell 0.82% today and the Nasdaq 1.19%. A few days before his WSJ OpEd, Mackey sold more than a million dollars worth of Whole Foods' stock. Details here.
You can see my earlier post on this here but there have been several new developments. This all stems from a WSJ piece written by the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods called "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare" in which he argues for insurance industry deregulation and a shrinking of the Medicare program. Here are the new developments:
1. A newly formed Facebook group promoting the boycott will soon surpass one thousand members. Not bad for a few hours but please join and send to your friends/family.
2. I cross posted the original Open Left post at Daily Kos this morning and it sat atop the rec list for three hours, useful exposure.
3. The Austin American Statesman (hometown of Whole Foods headquarters) has run a piece on their business blog with a link to both the Open Left post and the Facebook group.
4. The subject "Whole Foods boycott" has been Twittered about 200 times today with links to the aforementioned sites.
Help keep the momentum going and join the Facebook group, send the stories to your own networks, Twitter if you got it. It's only been hours but if we can increase this by an order of magnitude or two it will get significant publicity and send a message to corporate America.
Update: This plan is beginning to spread on Twitter. Help it along if you can.
The CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods has written a WSJ editorial attacking the still-in-the-works Obama health care plan in favor of less regulation on the insurance industry and downsizing Medicare. Here's one blogger's take:
Not very smart for a company that depends almost entirely on wealthy Democrats who are willing to pay five dollars for a six ounce carrot soda. Come on, you can do it, boycott them for at least a week and discover how much money you can save at Trader Joe's.
Actually, I think this is a great idea. A stupendous idea. Here's why:
1) Pretty much the only way to get the attention of corporate fat cats and the Senators and House members they own is to hit them in the pocket book. Remember when Sinclair Broadcasting was planning to air the anti-John Kerry "documentary" in 2004? The "sell Sinclair stock" meme was born and spread through the tubes and the stock started going down. Soon, plans for airing the documentary "changed." If a boycott of Whole Foods plan spreads, even if it is targeted for, say, the rest of August, they will notice. Similarly, a sell Whole Foods stock (WFMI) might also be effective.
2. My impression is that the customers of Whole Foods are left-leaning. If true, a boycott by even a quarter of Democratic customers would have a major impact.
3. While Whole Foods used to be a regional operation, it has now spread to 39 states. There are 3 locations in DC, 8 in Maryland and many more in Virginia. Congress members know of it and probably shop there.
4. If such a plan works, if the stock falls for example, the press will pick up on it and it will spread.
5. If the plan works it will be another example to corporate America that people want change. You would think nearly 70 million votes for Obama would have sent that message but I guess that's yesterday's news. We need to send a reminder and this could be a really good one.
6. It's a good opportunity to seek out local alternative sources for the stuff you might normally buy at Whole Foods. Farmers markets, etc. If you go to Whole Foods and stock up on essentials in anticipation of the boycott, it's not really going to hurt them is it?
There are downsides. For example, the people who work at Whole Foods could be negatively affected. That may argue for a time-specific boycott, or, alternatively, a stock-selling plan.
What do you think? Put your ideas in the comments. And if you have better Facebooking skills than mine or other viral messaging abilities, get to work.
Some new developments today in the Whole Foods boycott. The purpose, to reiterate, is a show of support for real health care reform and to oppose the Whole Foods CEO who wrote an editorial favoring pretty much the opposite of what we'd like to see in health care policy.
Some local media coverage will likely result. 