I will now shop at Whole Foods whenever possible

If this guy ever runs for any office I will vote for him. His list of things to do is partly recycled (who isn't in favor of Medicare reform?), but it is complete and the commentary after the list is especially good.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare
Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people's money."

—Margaret Thatcher

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 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.




Very good stuff. And extra good because he is causing reactions that, at least to me, color his opponents as not too bright. Says one pissed off former Whole Foods customer:

"While Mackey is worried about health care and stimulus spending, he doesn't seem too worried about expensive wars and tax breaks for the wealthy and big businesses such as his own that contribute to the deficit," said Lent.

So diversionary. If a supporter of Obamacare, or even Obama himself, can't come up with a more reasoned response to the points put forward by Mr. Mackey and others, this attempt at reform will cease soon. Earlier today I thought about making a post saying that the Obama administration was already sewing the seeds of blame for the failure of health care reform (insurance companies mobilizing armies of bought and paid for mercernaries to show up to town hall meetings, those vicious viral emails that spread lies unchecked, accusations of astroturfing) with its actions over the past few days. If you look at that first link, you will notice that the first part of the story is confirmation there were not lobbyist funded buses outside the meeting.

Obama's approach to this whole topic was a serious overestimate of the magnitude of his electoral mandate.

Bush/Obama Jokers

Apparently there was one of Bush last year, but it didn't get the attention Obama's is. Bush's published in an actual magazine: Vanity Fair.

Grassroots Propaganda

There's an image of Obama circulating on the Internet in which he's made to look like the Joker from the latest Batman movie. Below the image is the word "socialism" in bold black letters. The image has also been posted on telephone polls and walls around Los Angeles. I chose not to post the image here.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/04/obama-joker-picture-pops-up-in-los-angeles-and-across-the-inte/

I haven't seen the latest Batman movie, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. I don't know what the Joker does in that movie, or why someone would make a connection between that character and the current President. Is the author going for a physical resemblance, or is the Joker a socialist in the movie? I don't know. The article intimates that the Joker is more of an anarchist in the movie. It makes sense to me that a period of anarchy, or at least violent revolution, is likely at some time after socialism sets in, especially in a nation accustomed to the greatest freedom in human history.

I've only seen one scene from the new Batman movie, and in it the Joker is robbing a bank, and he or his partner in crime murders the driver of a bus that arrives to be the vehicle to whisk away the money being stolen from the bank. I don't know what happens to the Joker (I honestly don't). I hope good triumphs in the end.

Participatory Democracy

I believe it is too difficult to get involved in politics in this country. Politicians are demonized, and rightly so, because the game is so cutthroat. There are 535 jobs in Congress. There were 219 million people in this country of voting age in 2004. That means there is one person in Congress for every 411,165 people of voting age. That is a large pool to draw from for one job. The competition drives candidates to spend outrageous amounts of money and make outrageous promises to get elected. They then must go to Congress and bring huge amounts of money to their district so they will be re-elected. Sometimes, they are not re-elected, but it turns out that is does not matter. The cast changes, but the script stays the same.

So how can this be changed? Political office is viewed as a publicly ridiculed pursuit that requires nearly life-long dedication because of the competition for jobs. I would like to change this country, but not at such a high personal cost. I have other goals in my life besides becoming a politician. What if there were ten times more seats in Congress? In fact, how many seats were there in Congress 200 something years ago, when the country was founded, and how many citizens were there in the country then? Well some quick research tells me there were 132 electoral votes in 1792, which is equivalent to the number of seats in Congress, and that the total population in the 1790 census was 3,797,231. That averages out to 28,767 citizens per Congressional office. 411,165 divided by 28,767 equals 14.3. How much more participatory would our democracy be if there were 7,646 seats in Congress?

Right now there are a very small number of elite politicians who are paid, legally and illegally, exorbinant amounts of money to direct our country. Expand that group so that it is no longer such an exclusive club, cut their benefits and maybe their (legal) pay, and limit the amount of time one person can serve. Dilute the power one individual can have. Stop politics from being a profession, and return it to being a public service.

I am not posting links to the data I used because I am not confident in its absolute accuracy. I welcome anyone to find reliable data and post it. Even better would be to show the average total population per Congressional seat from 1792 to 2004 (or 2008 if the data is available).

The cost of your crappy healthcare in 15 years...

Second post in a row with foxnews as my primary source. I know they're not an unbiased source, but do unbiased sources exist anymore? There aren't many, and the vast majority of bias is on the other side, so please allow yourself to see a different perspective.

After 10 Years, Health Care Coverage Costs Turn Into Unfunded Mandate

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/23/years-health-care-coverage-costs-turn-unfunded-mandate/

According to an analysis by Republican staff of the House Ways and Means
panel, the deficit from the health care reform bill would be $760 billion by
2024, the end of the first 10 years of full benefits coverage. It would be
$1.6 trillion by the end of the 2020s.

The Republican projection takes the CBO estimates beyond the 10 years
the agency is restricted by law from projecting and shows that while the program
will cost about $1 trillion between 2011 and 2019, it will cost $2.2 trillion
between 2015 and 2024, not counting offsets to reduce the cost.
Put
another way, by 2019 the House proposals will be adding $65 billion a
year to the deficit, even with all the revenue raisers Democrats are now
proposing. The amount of deficit spending will continue to increase after 2019,
which would mean Congress is creating another entitlement.

The more hilarious part is at the end of the article.

House Democrats say many savings will be realized by the reduction in illnesses
as a result of preventive maintenance.

What the hell preventative maintenance BS are they talking about? Preventative maintenance? Like the government telling you to eat and exercise so you can stay healthy?

Don't they already do that? And how's that working? Peopel are still fat, and getting fatter than ever. The food pyramid has been around forever, and the government's recommendations on what's 'healthy' tend to change. How reliable is that? You want that government in control of healthcare?

Realize this is such baseless, farcical, hindenburg flaming hot air that it will never EVER EVER EVER work to 'reduce costs.' EVER. As much as they may try, government can't prevent or control behavior, and they especially can't help illness. Who signs up for illness? The lines to enroll in cancer, and alzheimer's are pretty short. These things just HAPPEN. You can't 'maintain' your way out of them! And you DEFINITELY can't rely on this fairy tale maintenance to reduce future healthcare costs. Or how about difficulties caused by aging? Will preventative maintenance help that? Broken hips and bad knees from aging HAPPEN. But yet the democrats have figured how 'preventative maintenance' will help reduce healthcare costs.

Hope this fails.

The Healthcare Bill

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/15/tax-rate-hit-s-level-house-democrats-health-reporm-proposal/

This is disgusting.

The plan would honor Obama's campaign promise not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000. But it would break an Obama pledge that no one -- including the wealthy -- would pay higher taxes than they did in the 1990s. The pledge, as listed on Obama's campaign Web site, was: "No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s."

Democrats argue that high-income families fared well under President George W. Bush's two terms as their taxes dropped and their income ssoared, giving them the ability to absorb higher taxes. Republicans argue that the tax increases would hurt small business owners who typically paytheir business taxes on their individual returns.

The rich 'had it easy' in the 1990's so they should bear the burden of higher taxes now? Such an argument is so void of logic it's nauseating. What about those who weren't high earners in the 1990s but are now? Why should they "absorb" (get robbed by) higher taxes.

Why bother dancing around it anymore? This is socialism sneaking up onyou from the backside. Let's hope there are enough brains left in power to keep our pants up while it tries to strike.

This broken campaign promise will surely be forgotten when 2012 rolls around. And even if it isn't, as the numbers of those benefitted by these government redistributions of wealth continue to grow, the votes will be secured to perpetuate. But realize this isn't sustainable. Not even close. And we're a lot closer than you may think to the dangerous realization of it.

It's a terrible time in America, where the bleeding of the public donefor a long time by all politicians, be it democrat or republican, is being taken to a new, irreversible, and terrifying level.

Mission Accomplished?

I guess its all a question of how you define "disastrous economic collapse".

World has avoided economic disaster, Obama says

Text:

L'AQUILA, Italy (AP) -- Lasting worldwide recovery "is still a ways off," President Barack Obama declared Friday, but he also said at the conclusion of a global summit that a disastrous economic collapse apparently has been averted.

Obama said world leaders had taken significant measures to address economic, environmental and global security issues.

"Reckless actions by a few have fueled a recession that spans the globe," Obama said of the meltdown that began in the United States with a tumble in housing prices and drastic slowing of business lending. The downturn now threatens superpowers and emerging nations alike.

Obama urged national leaders to unite behind a global recovery plan that includes stricter financial regulation and sustained stimulus spending.

"The only way forward is through shared and persistent effort to combat threats to our peace, our peace, our prosperity and our common humanity wherever they may exist. None of this will be easy," Obama told a news conference at the end of the Group of Eight summit of major economic powers.

The president rejected suggestions that the summit fell short of expectations by failing to call for tough new sanctions on Iran for its crackdown on democracy advocates after its disputed presidential election.

"What we wanted is exactly what we got - a statement of unity and strong condemnation," Obama said. He said the leaders' declaration was even more significant because it included Russia, "which doesn't make statements like that lightly."

Obama said world leaders will reevaluate their posture toward Iran at a meeting in Pittsburgh in September of the world's 20 major industrial and developing economies.

He cited "the appalling events of Iran's presidential election" and said the world would "take stock of Iran's progress" and watch its behavior.

Leaders have made clear that for Iran to take its "rightful place" in the world, the country must adhere to international standards and behave responsibility, Obama said.

The president was next turning to more photogenic events: a meeting with the pope and a stop in Africa.

Obama, his wife and senior advisers met Pope Benedict XVI and exchanged gifts shortly before leaving Italy late Friday for Ghana. Obama and Benedict had spoken by phone but had not met before.

"It's a great honor for me. Thank you so much," Obama said as he met the pontiff.

Benedict asked Obama about the G-8 summit, eliciting Obama's assessment that it was "very productive."

The cameras clattered while that sat down at the pope's desk.

"Your Holiness, I'm sure you're used to having your picture taken. I'm getting used to it," Obama said.

Later in the day, Obama was to fly to Ghana on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as president, but second visit to Africa. He gave a speech in Egypt last month.

On a pressing issue back home, Obama acknowledged that his top legislative priority - health care overhaul - had encountered rocky going in Congress during his overseas trip, with opposition building among both Republicans and economically conservative Democrats.

But he said he still was confident of getting the measure passed before Congress begins its August recess.

Asked if that timetable was "do or die," Obama responded: "I never believe anything is do or die. But I want to get it done by the August recess."

On the world economy, Obama said that rising food prices mean millions more are falling into desperate poverty "and right now, at this defining moment, we face a choice. We can either shape our future or let events shape it for us."

"While our markets are improving and we appear to have averted global collapse, we know that too many people are still struggling. So we agree that full recovery is still a ways off." He said the world leaders felt "it would be premature to begin winding down our stimulus plans."

Earlier in the week, the 186-nation International Monetary Fund released an updated economic forecast, predicting that the global economy will shrink 1.4 percent this year, the worst performance in the post-World War II period. That forecast was slightly worse than the 1.3 percent decline the IMF predicted in April.

The international lending agency did see prospects improving for next year with global growth forecast to climb to 2.5 percent, up from an April projection of 1.9 percent.

Leaders at Friday's meetings also committed themselves to a $20 billion initiative to help farmers in poor countries boost production.

Asked about his appeal to fellow leaders for the aid, Obama said he talked about his father, who was born in Kenya.

"The telling point is when my father traveled to the United States from Kenya to study ... the per capita income of Kenya was higher than South Korea's."

Now, Obama said, South Korea is industrialized and relatively wealthy while Kenya, as well as much of Africa, is still struggling economically.

"There is no reason why African countries can't do the same" and rise out of poverty with modern and open institutions, Obama said.

On nuclear weapons, Obama said the U.S. and Russia must show they're "fulfilling their commitments" to lead global efforts to curb the spread. If the two superpowers show they can limit or eliminate these weapons, it would strengthen their moral authority to speak to other potential nuclear nations such as North Korea and Iran.

Obama said there is a need to build "a system of international norms" for nuclear weapons. With respect to North Korea and Iran, he said, "It's not a matter of singling them out ... but a standard that everybody can live by."

Six months in office, Obama said he supports a streamlining of summits - the G-8, G-20 and NATO - and attending fewer of those meetings. He said the United Nations is in need of reform, but international summits fill a gap left by a U.N. structure that doesn't leverage its power as effectively as it could.

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