Whole Foods boycott: Reader rejoinders
A reader, Bennett Johnson of Mill Valley, e-mailed me his disagreement with my skeptical take on the Whole Foods boycott campaign, itemized in today's paper (2d item).
Herewith (links added):
I am a business man who loves Whole Foods (My family has shopped there for decades), but supports the boycott. I thought I would drop you a note to help clarify what's going on: why the boycott makes sense, why it can be extremely effective.
Mr. Mackey is not the first CEO to think that he is smarter than his customers. We have seen a lot of that in the last year or so. Whole Foods has enjoyed a special status and special trust with liberal, educated consumers. This unique status and trust are essential elements of the Whole Foods business model.
It is astonishing that a CEO would so brazenly break the trust, and openly risk such a valuable relationship. He will find that it is much easier to lose than to gain trusted relationships with customers.
The language in his article may have sounded innocuous, but educated consumers know that his call to dismantle Medicare and to rely on charity handouts is simply extreme right-wing ideology. It certainly doesn't amount to a "plan" or a viable alternative for 47 million Americans without health insurance.
And while it is great that Whole Foods employees get health insurance, customers are tired of CEOs who brag about doing the right thing, seemingly embracing an ever-lowering bar of decency that makes them look-good.
His "alternative" or "plan" not only did nothing to address the uninsured crisis, it failed to address spiraling costs. I am all for tort reform and cost transparency, but as you know, these will have a marginal effect on real costs overall.
We did not hear from Mr. Mackey when the Bush administration and the Republican congress made a $7 trillion budget-busting giveaway to big pharma in the last Medicare bill. Nor did he make a reference to it. Instead his supposedly "libertarian" view is that we should simply de-fund Medicare, which of course would end in tragedy for millions of Americans.
A word on boycotts: don't expect to see grocery aisles empty overnight. The boycott has to build considerable momentum. And that is what is happening. Over 15,000 people have signed up on the boycott page on Facebook -- in less than a week. (Starting with 300 on Friday morning).
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Another reader, Dave Heventhal of San Francisco, had a rejoinder to Margaret Thatcher's quote -- "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" -- cited by John Mackey.
"The problem with capitalism is that eventually only a few can afford health care or retirement."
| August 19 2009 at 10:34 AM
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kd9
8/19/2009 11:02:58 AM"I am all for tort reform and cost transparency, but as you know, these will have a marginal effect on real costs overall."
Oh, I know nothing of the kind. I DO know that paying millions of dollars in malpractice insurance is a real cost that drives health care costs up. I do know that dozens of unnecessary tests to prevent a later unfounded lawsuit is a real cost. Would you actually choose a doctor/hospital that charges five times more for an equivalent procedure? You wouldn't if you had cost transparency. Costs themselves would level down over time. Some of the greatest costs savings would come from HSAs (saving and earning interest on money for major medical expenses rather than letting insurance companies use this money). Imagine that you could shop for the coverage YOU need from all over the country rather than being forced to buy insurance in the state you live in. Imagine how much less your insurance would cost if you didn't have to pay for insurance that covers diseases/treatments that you don't want covered. Imagine paying for health insurance like home owners insurance. You don't get coverage if someone dents a wall, but you are fully covered if your house burns down. And if you want lamp breakage insurance, you can pay more for it. Doesn't that just make more sense?
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buggedknot
8/19/2009 12:10:49 PMThe real problem is that a free market system does not exist in the realm of health care. If one group is charged one price for lets say an x-ray and another group is billed at a higher or lower rate that is not a free market it is a what ever the market will bear pricing structure. The real question is what does that x-ray cost? Is it what group a is billed, is it what group b is billed or is it what an uninsured person is billed? Just imagine entering a supermarket and not knowing what anything cost until you went to the checkout and if you paid with credit you would be charged a lower rate then if you paid with cash, that about sums up the current health care market in U.S. the
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username withheld
8/19/2009 12:12:57 PMThis comment violated SFGate's Terms and Conditions, and has been removed.
optimusnewsom
8/19/2009 12:16:41 PMWhy isn't SFGATE displaying correctly.
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moxy313
8/19/2009 12:16:52 PMMalpractice lawsuits account for 2% of an insurers budget compared to over 30% in profits. It's not a drain at all, in fact, it's necessary when doctors and hospitals kill over 200,000 Americans a year. What price do you put on their heads? or rather, their dead bodies.
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mistymeanor
8/19/2009 12:18:28 PMI am boycotting the boycotters.
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zivjali
8/19/2009 12:18:31 PMI have never been a WF customer but I may start shopping there just to show support for their CEO, whom I agree with wholeheartedly.
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troy23
8/19/2009 12:21:35 PMI would care less about the political views of Whole Food's CEO, EXCEPT every time I walk into the Potrero Hill store I am bombarded by these huge feel-good "we use green power, free range eggs" etc messages plastered on the walls. I hate they put all that crap right in my face. Look, Whole Foods, you are no better than a Safeway. Don't try to make us feel good about shopping there, its just a freakin' grocery store, you are not saving the world. Having the CEO then spout right-wing ideology just adds insult to injury.
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twirlinfartknkr
8/19/2009 12:24:26 PMCalifornia and a couple other states have passed medical tort reform and it's made zero dent in spiraling healthcare costs (and profits of HMOs).
This WF CEO should know that in countries with single-payer, businesses are not saddled with legacy healthcare costs. You'd think he might be interested in that.
The best thing this boycott can do is bring down the stock price. That will get his short term attention.
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joeshmoesf
8/19/2009 12:26:11 PMHSA's are the biggest scam of the decade. Very few Americans benefit from them. I'm amazed that Mackey supports them. Not all Americans work for companies which can afford to pay the full amount of employee premiums.
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