Enlightened, affordable healthcare, that works

Whole Foods-Style Health Care

[...] Whole Foods has always had a philosophy of treating its employees as intelligent human beings, empowering them to made decisions not normally delegated to people who might otherwise be seen as unskilled labor, and giving them significant incentives to improve their performance and productivity. Part of his formula for treating employees well has been the company's approach to health-care benefits.

He talked about it in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal last week. Here's the essence of it:

Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our 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.

And then later on:

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.

Do you see the essence of what he has done? First, by offering high-deductible insurance, he has returned the whole concept of health insurance back to what it should have been all along -- a safety net against the really bad health catastrophes. Second, by giving employees the funding to pay for their own care when they just get the sniffles, he returns health care to the discipline that all other markets for any other kind of service have to face -- consumers making careful decisions about how to spend their own money. [...]

The article goes on to explain how the Obamacare approach is the exact opposite of what whole foods has done, and what it will mean in practical terms if it's forced on us:

[...] If Whole Foods had to switch over to an Obamacare-style approach, its costs of doing business would rise. And his employees would not be pleased, either, because under his enlightened approach to management he's already crafted his company's health benefits to reflect his employees' stated wishes. As he puts it, "Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction."

Labor is the largest cost for most companies. Benefits are the fastest-growing component of labor costs. And health-care insurance is the fastest-growing component of benefits. If Obamacare is enacted, labor costs are only going to go higher -- which means that corporate profits will have to go lower, unless companies pass the costs on to consumers.

Any company CEO -- and all the more so, people who run small businesses where labor costs are high and profit margins are already slim -- needs to be concerned about this. But Mackey is coming from another place, as well.

He's pointing out the very good news that corporate profits and providing generous health benefits don't need to be at odds. He's already found the way -- he just needs to keep government from messing it up for him and his workers.

And yet Mackey has been demonized for expressing these views in print. Left-leaning bloggers have tried to organize a boycott of Whole Foods to punish Mackey. [...]

It's scary how they are gong after Mackey to silence him. The article goes on to say how the people who think health care is a right, seem to think that free speech isn't. It also says we have a chance for REAL healthcare reforms that WORK, if people like John Mackey persist in speaking out, and don't cave in to the pressure of threats to silence them.

Be sure to read Mackey's brilliant piece in the WSJ:

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

Yes, eight things that will work, without raising the deficit, that the Obama Administration doesn't want you to hear about.


Also see:
Healthcare debate: "Bring your ideas to the table?" or “Agree with us, or we’ll crush you?”

UPDATE: The union fatcats behind the Whole Foods boycott
     

Healthcare debate: "Bring your ideas to the table?" or “Agree with us, or we’ll crush you?”

The latter seems to be the message for John Mackey, CEO for Whole Foods, who dared add his voice to the healthcare debate by offering his ideas:

The Left boycotts Whole Foods...

[...] In short, Whole Foods is everything leftists talk about when they talk about “corporate responsibility.”

And yet lefties want to boycott the company because CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed that suggests alternatives to single payer health care? It wasn’t even a nasty or mean-spirited op-ed. Mackey didn’t spread misinformation about death panels, call anyone names, or use ad hominem attacks. He put forth actual ideas and policy proposals, many of them tested and proven during his own experience running a large company. Is this really the state of debate on the left, now? “Agree with us, or we’ll crush you?”

These people don’t want a dicussion. They don’t want to hear ideas. They want you to shut up and do what they say, or they’re going to punish you. [...]

Letter from a Whole Foods worker
Follow the link for the letter, and a copy of the flyer that picketers from the UFCW are passing around in an effort to damage and silence Mackey. But this following bit is taken from a post on the Whole Foods Forum:

[...] Do You Know Who You Are Boycotting?
posted at 8/21/2009 7:05 AM CDT

* Mackey lectures at Universities about the horrors of factory farming

* He says “Right now, Americans have to pretend factory farms don’t exist. They turn their eyes away, because there’s no alternative, there’s no choice. Once there is a choice, we will allow ourselves to be outraged.”

* He makes $1 a year and donates his stock portfolio to charity.

* He set up a $100,00 fund to help his employees with personal problems.

* He’s a vegetarian and his company will not buy from producers that treat their animals unethically.

* He flies commercial, rents the smallest cars, and stays in the cheapest hotel rooms - not because he’s cheap, but because he has no need for largesse

* He and his wife participate in yoga

* He gives over $1 million a year to animal welfare groups, education, relief work, and spiritual movements.

* Employees have full say in who they work with - a new employee must receive a 2/3 vote in order to make it past probation.

* Employees also vote on all company-wide initiatives

* There’s a salary book in every store - “no secrets” management believes everyone should know how much everyone else is making

* Executive salaries are capped at 14 times the lowest workers salary - If they want more money, everyone else has to get more money first

* Non-executive employees hold 94% of company stock options

* Pay is linked to team performance - profit sharing

* At least 5% of annual profits go to local charities

* Full-timers get 100% of their health care costs paid for - under plans the employees have selected

* “They just have a lot more respect for you as a person here” says an employee

And because he had a different idea about how the United States can fix it health care situation, none of this matters? He’s a caring person and many of you want to treat him like a monster. Why? Not because he opposes reform, but because he’s bringing more ideas to the table.

You people are despicable. If the country had more CEO’s like Mackey, this country would be a greater place.

I remember when health care savings accounts were first created, Whole Foods offered to contribute matching funds to their employees who would open one. They were thrilled, because they could use those funds to buy alternative medical treatments like acupuncture and chiropractic etc., that conventional insurance often would not cover. They were thrilled, because they now had more choices available to them.

It was exactly the opposite of “Agree with us, or we’ll crush you”, which seems to be increasingly the mode of operation that the Democrat Party is preferring to use. It's unbelievably ugly.