Whole Foods gets an earful about CEO's opposition to health care reform (photo too)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4142

By Michael Moore
26 August 2009

ST. PAUL - The CEO of Whole Foods Market, the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods, is against President Obama’s efforts to reform and expand health care insurance. Union activists nationwide are helping John Mackey share that opinion with his store’s millions of socially conscious consumers.
Mackey, Whole Foods’ co-founder and CEO, penned an op-ed piece in the Aug. 12 Wall Street Journal entitled “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.” In it, Mackey calls a public health insurance option “the last thing our country needs,” and says it would amount to “a government takeover of our health care system.”

“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?” Mackey asks in the column. “This ‘right’ has never existed in America.”

On Wednesday, Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers pounced on those comments, seizing the opportunity to hold a demonstration in front of Whole Foods’ St. Paul store. Organizers called the demonstration the “launch of a consumer campaign to educate shoppers about Whole Foods CEO’s efforts to undermine health care reform and President Obama.”

Although Whole Foods drew UFCW pickets several years ago, when Local 789 sought to organize the St. Paul store’s workers, Local 789 President Don Seaquist said Wednesday’s action was not directed at the store’s workers, but the chain’s CEO.


Don Seaquist talks to a customer outside the Whole Foods store in St. Paul.

Photo by Michael Moore

FULL story at link.

[JackintheGreen]

1. Mackey's argument rests

on the idea that if you give people control of their own healthcare dollars, they will be less liberal in how they spend them and only pay for procedures they "really" need. But most of us have control of our own dental and vision healthcare dollars, and what does that mean? Well, for me it means that I don't *really* need that new pair of glasses, even though my old one's are so scratched I can barely see out of them, and i don't *really* need that semi-annual dental exam/cleaning because my gums aren't bleeding that much when I brush.

Of course, if I could get these things taken care of they would cost a little money now (which I cannot afford), but by waiting until my teeth are falling out of my head and I get in an auto accident because i can't see properly I save my healthcare dollars.

And spend much much more later.

Asshole.

[Kahuna]

3. How am I supposed to know what I "really" need? Am I not supposed

to have a thorough physical each year? That would be the only way to determine that something is amiss.

It amazes me that people actually buy Mackey's argument. They are not very bright if they do.

[JackintheGreen]

4. Sing it, Kahuna!

[quiet.american]

2. Excellent --walked by a Whole Foods after work the other day, glanced in -- it was a ghost town. nt

[peacetalksforall]

5. What if the only people going there are Mackey think alikes. I feel so

sorry for some of the employees, but I just can't go in. His approach is so bizarrely uncharitable that I know I will ever go back until they announce a retraction and he leaves. I'm lucky, I have alternatives, but, regreattably, with just a little more gas consumption.

[peacetalksforall]

6. What if the only people going there are Mackey think alikes. I feel so

sorry for some of the employees, but I just can't go in. His approach is so bizarrely uncharitable that I know I will ever go back until they announce a retraction and he leaves. I'm lucky, I have alternatives, but, regreattably, with just a little more gas consumption.