On Tuesday, the CEO of Whole Foods wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journalon his opposition to Obamacare. In it he laid out how Whole Foods provides health care for its employees:
For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all 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.
Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. 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. Our plan's costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.
He also mentions that as part of the Whole Foods family, employees are part of the decision making process in regards to policy:
At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.
Predictably, the Left went off the deep end. They questioned how the grocery store they love and support could be so closed-minded when it came to health care. They suggested boycotts of the chain, to somehow "force" the CEO into changing his mind/beliefs.
What I find ironic is this:
Whole Foods pays not only 100% of the premiums, but additional monies for the employees to use as they see fit (for my readers in Tucson, that means the employees have better than the "free" health care pushed by Obama). They also have input into how their health care options are managed (will you get that from any Government-run system?). And the Left responds by saying "Don't shop there!". If their boycott is successful (which very few are), it will force Whole Foods to reduce costs to stay profitable. That is most easily achieved by reducing labor costs.
Which means a reduction in jobs.
So employees that had truly free health care will then lose that coverage, and go into the very system that the Lefties want to change, to a system that provides "free" health care.
Seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Then again, so does Liberalism.
+++UPDATE+++As usual, someone else can state things better than I can:
I plan to do a lot more shopping at Whole Foods in the coming weeks. Mostly in response to the moronic boycott of the store now gaining momentum on the left.
Let me see if I have the logic correct here: Whole Foods is consistently ranked among the most employee-friendly places to work in the service industry. In fact, Whole Foods treats employees a hell of a lot better than most liberal activist groups do. The company has strict environmental and humane animal treatment standards
about how its food is grown and raised. The company buys local. The
store near me is hosting a local tasting event for its regional
vendors. Last I saw, the company’s lowest wage earners make $13.15 per
hour. They also get to vote on what type of health insurance they want.
And they all get health insurance. The company is also constantly
raising money for various philanthropic causes. When I was there today,
they were taking donations for a school lunch program. 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-edad 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?”
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
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.
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