Comment by zader | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zader | Hacker News Reader

"So, if you are a Whole Foods shopper, please consider honoring the boycott, at least for a short period of time. The impact will be very evident, and almost immediate."

I have a different idea.

If you are a liberal who shops at Whole Foods, and you read John Mackey's article with his ideas about health care reform, why don't you think about whether the solutions he's proposing -- and has successfully implemented among thousands of happy, healthy Whole Foods employees -- might be worth some serious consideration.

Instead of, you know, rejecting his free market ideas out-of-hand with insulting ad hominem attacks and threats of a hard-line ideological boycott.

Tolerance, civility, honest debate, etc.

Just sayin'.

Because Whole Foods has been amazingly successful as a company in recent years. And they do have thousands of employees. And I'm fairly sure that those employees like being able to keep the majority of their health care dollars, instead of having them thrown away on overly comprehensive health insurance policies they don't want or need.

Two points.

Firstly and most importantly thank you for keeping such a high standard of discourse. It's appreciated.

Secondly, many of Mackey's points are sound policy: health insurance should be universally deductable (or not) and HSAs may or may not be very effective.

However, others are disingenuous; all healthcare is rationed, in the US it's rationed by ability to pay whereas in Canada and the UK it's rationed by medical severity; food and shelter are already commonly provided by governments; the existence of faceless bureaucracies limiting care in traditional health insurance agencies and last but not least the Constitution's explicit disclaimer being treated as an exclusive list of rights to be guaranteed.

Most crucially in my view it entirely ignores the issue of insurers' ability to redefine their risk pools. What protection does Mackey's plan offer someone with a preexisting condition? Someone who develops a chronic and expensive condition? Someone who becomes unemployed? These are severely problematic use cases in the current system.

"being able to keep the majority of their health care dollars" is not grounded in reality. A friend of mine used to be a full-time Whole Foods employee, this is her story: http://www.metafilter.com/84093/This-organic-mustard-makes-m...

More like a childish rant.

His numbers don't make a lot of sense to me. As I read it, there's a $2500 deductible and Whole Foods contributes $1800/yr to an account their employees can use to pay for care. This basically equates to a $700 deductible, no?

I agree, with one correction: you do not have to be a liberal to shop at Whole Foods and to think whether the proposed solutions are worth consideration.

This split into conservatives and liberals, while sometimes meaningful, often hurts the debate. We can take each issue on its merits without referring to talking points, party lines, etc.

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