Finally Someone Has the Answer and All He Gets Is A Boycott

I have always liked Whole Foods, although I have only been an occasional shopper, but after the Op Ed article, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, published in the WSJ I will make Whole Foods my primary store. He exactly nailed the solution for healthcare in our country. His thoughts are not just a mere theory but they have been employed with great success at his company.

A misguided group of, well I won’t write what I am thinking, let’s just simply say socialist and their blind followers started a group on Facebook to boycott Whole Foods. Why, because Mackey had the nerve to suggest an alternative to the healthcare plan of our Dear Leader. I seem to remember that on several occasions our Dear Leader said he was willing to listen to anybody’s suggestions on how to “fix” our healthcare system. I guess that to the socialist members of the Facebook group this does not include the ideas from someone who has actually been successful at “fixing” healthcare. The reaction to Mackey’s Op Ed shows us that the goal of the left is not to solve the problems with our current healthcare system as they proclaim it to be. Their goal is in reality to continue increasing the government’s role in all of our lives.

What are the horribly dangerous ideas that Mackey suggested justify the boycott and the personal attacks? You can read the Op Ed for yourself but in summary here they are right out of his article

• 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 have had many people say to me that you are quick to criticize Obama’s plan, but what are your suggestions. Well the points listed above are them; by and large Mackey nailed it. He was brave enough and patriotic enough to offer positive input on this volatile subject and he has been rewarded with calls for his resignation from the company he co-founded. Mackey was foolish enough to believe that Obama and his supporters really wanted to solve the problem and he tried to help.

Please support Mackey and Whole Foods, shop at their stores, e-mail your support and if you are on Facebook become a fan of Whole Foods. If you want to let one of the founders of the boycott know what you think e-mail him at markerosenthal@gmail.com Please be respectful he was brave enough to list his e-mail address.

Obama calls doctors a bunch money grubbing parasites

I listened to the President's talk about healthcare July 22. The thing that I remember most is that he basically called doctors a bunch of money grubbing parasites that put money ahead of their patients needs. He said, “You come in and you've got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat, or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, you know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out." He blames it on the system?? Nonsense and even if it was the system his plan will not change this, unless he is going to compensate the doctor the same regardless of whether the doctor does a tonsillectomy or gives him a throat lozenge. He must apologize to all doctors immediately!!!!

History Shows Us the Truth About Obama’s Healthcare Plan

Obama’s healthcare plan is the biggest most sweeping government program since social security. The President has been out trying to win over support for this program. He has been telling us how essential it is to our economy and making many promises as to what it will do for us. Obama has made five promises for his healthcare plan:
1. Participation is voluntary
2. It will cost less
3. It Will cover everybody
4. You can keep your current doctor
5. It will not add to the deficit

All this may sound well and good but these are merely promises. Obama has often been compared to FDR so let’s see what history can teach us about FDR’s big new program. When Franklin Roosevelt introduced his proposal for a new program, Social Security, he promised five things:
1. Participation would be completely voluntary
2. Participants would only pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their income.
3. The money that participants elected to contribute would be tax deductible
4. The money put into the social security program would only be used to pay social security benefits. The money would not be used to pay for any other government programs
5. Social security benefit payments would not be taxable income.

I don’t need to tell you as you all ready know not a single promise was kept and the future solvency of the Social Security program is very much in doubt. Oh you say this time it is different the Democrats are in charge and they would never let anything happen to our healthcare plan. Every one of the social security promises were broken by the Democrats. Oh but how can this be I thought the Republicans were the ones taking away social security? And there you see the real reason Obama and his party are pushing so hard for the healthcare plan. It will create an even larger dependent class that they can lie to and scare them into keeping them in power.

Health Insurance

I think the issue with health insurance is that it is not really insurance or at least it is not used as insurance. What health “insurance” has evolved into is pre-paid medical. Insurance is supposed to be used for the unexpected, the unforeseen incident that we can do little to protect ourselves from. Fire insurance in case our home burns down. We have theft insurance in case we are burglarized. We buy auto insurance in case of an accident. If we treated auto insurance as we treat health insurance it would pay for our gas, oil changes and even routine repairs. I believe that many of the problems we have today with our health care system can be solved if we went back to a true insurance model. Use our health insurance only for major medical expenses. We should pay for our regular doctor visits, minor illnesses and yes even prescriptions out of our own pockets. But wait you say you cannot afford that! I think that we cannot afford not to. The only way to bring down the cost of health services while maintaining quality is to have the people using the services pay for the services directly. Let’s say that a routine doctor visit cost $350. I have no idea how much it actually costs and I would bet that most you don’t either. Many of us would rightly say that we cannot afford to go to the doctor and we would no longer go. This is where the miracle happens; doctors’ not wanting to go out of business find away to reduce the $350 office visit to $150 or want ever it takes to get patients back in the door. Medical costs are high because they can be. If the government takes over the payment of medical expenses from insurance companies we have not fixed the problem only masked the symptom. Artificial price controls will only lead to shortages and lower quality. This has been true ever time price controls have been used in every industry I have no reason to believe that this time will be the exception