I hate the high-deductible HSA plans.  It’s just another scheme by the insurance companies to compete with each other by lowering the prices that they charge to the people who aren’t currently costing them money.  Making it so that those people don’t pay enough in premiums to cover the health care costs of those who do need it—which could be themselves in 5 years.

A high deductible plan might be okay for people with a lot of money, like the guy from Whole Foods, but it would make it less likely that poor people would get preventative care.  Health care doesn’t need reforming because it’s failing rich people.  There are millions of people without any health coverage, mostly because they can’t afford insurance.  Most of them couldn’t afford a high deductible even if the insurance was free.  Giving impoverished people an insurance plan with a 2500 dollar deductible would be insuring that they wouldn’t be getting any care at all until they were too sick to stay out of the hospital. 

It’s always interesting to hear how rich people think though.

“I’m still trying to decide what choices it is that this plan actually expands.  You get to pay more for worse insurance, you get substantial pressure put on you to not seek medical care, you’re placed in a situation where unexpected medical problems are almost certainly ruinous and you have no regulation guaranteeing you even minimum coverage from whatever it is you’re paying hundreds of dollars a month for.”

But at least there are no ObamaCare Death Boards.  Bring back Debtor’s Prisons, and call it a day.  Sounds like a win-win for everyone… just don’t let The Government touch my Medicare…

[/birthdeathbagger]...

After Whole Foods bought my Wild Oats (which was already kinda pricey) the prices zoomed up.

Meats by several dollars a pound, organics by googles.

And there was LESS choice, for instance: the holistic cat food that was fairly reasonable in the large can, could afterwards only be bought in the small cans with price hike even there, over and above what one would usually pay for the small can, now the price of rubies.

And the aisles were empty, I even asked the butcher about that, and sure enugh he agreed: fewer customers.

Fewer customers paying more: sounds like health plan the CEO proposes.

And unlike my last health insurance plan, which is the only one I could find to take me on an (at an exorbinant, blackmail rate, of course—I was able to switch to another store, and did.

Fuck you, Whole Paycheck.

Sickness is Health
Less Choice is More Choice
Ignorance is Brilliance…

Wow.  I’ll never set foot in a Whole Foods again. Motherfucker, I had no idea.

Maybe I am crazy, but isn’t a large part of this guy’s customer base going to be city liberals?  I hope this backfires on him bigtime.  I’m going to tell everyone i know about this.

We have a High Deductible Plan.  Last year, the deductible was $3000 per calendar year.  Then, in July of this year, my wife’s employer changed it to $4400 per calendar year.  What this means of course is that we essentially pay a $4400 deductible for the entire year, even though we paid the premiums for a $3000 plan for the first six months.  Nice scam, huh?

I have no idea how we are going to pay for the birth of our son next month.  Maybe the hospital will re-possess the baby?

So, yeah, HDHP’s suck.  Anyone who is pushing this as a solution has never had one or has so much money that he/she has never had to worry about health care costs.

If the HSA could only be used for medical stuff, and covered the change in the deductible, then it should appear the same to the employees (folks, correct me if I’m wrong). But this doesn’t really address how to fix the problems, as pointed out.
All he’s saying is that businesses should shoulder more of the responsibility for health insurance (for their fulltime employees), and get a tax break to offset this somewhat.

It’s interesting that he uses Whole Foods as an example. If I were going to pick an employer provided healthcare system, I’d go with Microsoft’s every time. No copays, no deductibles, generous maternity and paternity coverage, accepted tons of places, overall pretty sweet. Of course, they avoid the profiteering of the insurance companies by being their own insurance company - they pay no premiums, and if you get sick they handle it.

In other words, they have single-payer for the Country of Microsoft, and it works because Microsoft is a big enough corporation making sufficient money. Kind of like the USG would be if we could get single-payer passed…

Maybe they’ll do like they used to in Congo, where hospitals wouldn’t let mothers and their newborns leave until they’d settled the bill (the same applied to any healthy patient).

Not to belabor the obvious, but when Reagan was slashing taxes on the rich, nobody on the other side gave a rat’s ass how much it threw the budget out of whack. This is because cutting taxes was a principle, a goal, and people would just have to figure out how to pay for it. As the Wall St. Journal sniffed, “Reagan was not elected to be the nation’s accountant-in-chief.”

Well, guess what, rightards. To us, getting reliable, accessable, sanemedical coverage is just as much a principle and goal to us as cutting Steve Forbes’ taxes was to you. And we won the last election. If the nation has to strain to pay for it, that’s what it has to do. It’s worth it.

I do find it very odd that Mr. Libertarian is ever so glad to bite the hands that feed him. I wonder how many Randites shop at Whole Foods. Most likely it’s people like me who don’t need to go there anymore.

I second judybrowni, fuck you Whole Paycheck. 

One of the most maddening aspects of the health care discussion, and CEO Asshat dances all around it, is this belief among the insured that the uninsured are all young, perfectly healthy people with buckets of extra money that they are selfishly and wantonly withholding from the insurance system, laughing with glee as they run up huge insurance bills in the ER from their cocaine binges, ski accidents, and bling buying sprees.  I’m sorry but I lay a lot of the blame on Hillary and supporters of hers like Paul Krugman who went on and on about how mandates on the uninsured deadbeats were the most important feature of the plan <strike>because Obama opposed them</strike> because forcing a few million people in shitty jobs to pay for bullshit catastrophic coverage will magically reduce everyone’s premiums to nothing.  I swear, it’s almost as big a canard as the tort reform one.  According to the best estimates, the uninsured are responsible for 8% of the average insurance premium.  8%.  Hardly justification to use Reagan-esque Welfare Queen talking points to demonize them and talk about fines and wage garnishment.

Sorry if that’s a bit of a threadjack but I really think people need to educate themselves about this and stop subscribing to the Mandates are Magic notion.

Most likely it’s people like me who don’t need to go there anymore.

That’s for damn-sure. I wasn’t aware that I was looking for an excuse never to shop there again, aside from their overpriced produce, but lo and behold, here it is.

High Deductible plans also scam you by not applying anything to the deductible.  What?  You say you’ve spent $2000 of your $2400 deductible?  Didn’t you read the notice where we retroactively ceased to cover glucose tests and MRI’s?  So according to us, you still have $2300 to go on your deductible.

One of the most maddening aspects of the health care discussion, and CEO Asshat dances all around it, is this belief among the insured that the uninsured are all young, perfectly healthy people with buckets of extra money that they are selfishly and wantonly withholding from the insurance system, laughing with glee as they run up huge insurance bills in the ER from their cocaine binges, ski accidents, and bling buying sprees.

No no no no no.  The anti-health care people are certain that it’s poor, black and hispanic people who don’t have it and with any luck, they’ll all die off and leave us white and middle-class again.

Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

The saddest thing about the Rightards terrified of “the government getting in the way of my Medicare”, etc., is that they’re taking the side of the fucks who would gladly cut the heart out of Medicare given half a chance.

After Whole Foods bought my Wild Oats (which was already kinda pricey) the prices zoomed up.

Yep, and Whole Foods had decent sales that were often advertised—I have to actually go into Whole Frickin’ Paycheck to find out if anything I happen to need at the time is affordable.  Luckily, we did get a smallish Trader Joe’s last year, but there are still a few items I like that can only consistently be found at WF.  They’re still busy, but we only have two in the area and both are in very affluent neighborhoods… one being a strongly GOP suburb.

Libertarians really are profoundly stupid and have never even visited the planet earth.

Oh, there’s lots of reasons to shun WF. The CEO’s fucknuttery and their union-busting for two.

Whole Foods jumped the shark a long time ago.  Vive la co-op!

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.

I’m going to take a wild guess that these are matching contributions in the same vein as a 401k.  So you’d need to have $3,600 to save every year in order to get that maximum $1,800.  I save 15% of my paycheck (and I bet I make as much or more as your average Whole Foods wage slave), and $3,600 would be most of the money I manage to save every year.  So much for a downpayment on a condo, and my 401k, and my emergency savings.

We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live.

Fantastic.  So all insurance companies can set up shop in the state with the worst possible enforcement of insurance laws.  They won’t actually cover anything, but your premiums will sure be cheap.

Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.

I would appreciate this, actually.  I recently had the opportunity to have a test paid for by a third party, but they needed the cost of the test upfront.  My usual medical clinic would not under any circumstances tell me how much the test or the office visit would cost until I committed to getting the test done in their office.  That’s not the behavior of a business that’s on the up and up.  That’s the monopolistic, exploitive behavior of a business that knows they can do whatever they want because you have no other options.

keshmeshi, note that to him, the purposes of making health-care costs ‘transparent’ is so those greedy consumers will understand exactly how much the poor, poor insurance companies shell out - not so that consumers can be more informed about exactly how much Dr. Fee is charging them to get a ‘routine’ X-ray at the radiology clinic he owns.

Christ, they just alienated 90% of their customer base!

Gee, all those suggestions by Mr. Fuckwad CEO, and he managed to leave out, “massively increase wages for the average U.S. worker, so they can manage their needs, save for the future, and afford healthcare simultaneously.” This stupid sonofabitch wouldn’t survive one fucking month on what the average U.S. worker is taking home.

Actually—there is a point at which the government will pay for your food. Because, you know, we’re a “great nation” and people starving to death because they have no income is fucking embarrassing, and people actually aren’t all that keen to hand over money to everyone who says they can’t afford it. Government screening helps sort the needy from the not-so.

So why should health care, which is a need like food, be different?

Oh, and count me as another person who won’t go to Whole Foods anymore. They do carry some specialty items that I considered worth going there for sometimes, but from now on, I will make do with what the other stores have.

So why should health care, which is a need like food, be different?

Or housing. See: Section 8.

OK, high-rise housing blocks didn’t end well, but they don’t do those anymore, thank God.

No no no no no.  The anti-health care people are certain that it’s poor, black and hispanic people who don’t have it and with any luck, they’ll all die off and leave us white and middle-class again.

Anti-health care people, yes, but insured liberals who favor mandates truly believe that a) lack of a mandate on the young deadbeats is the main reason their health care costs are so high and b) most of them can easily afford the insurance (all they have to do is buy less bling and gadgets).  Seriously.  You would not believe how many times I’ve gotten this from Democrats.

People REALLY don’t know how much healthcare costs. 

I work at Planned Parenthood and when I am talking to uninsured people who do not qualify for any of our funding programs or ar looking for services for which there is no funding, we tell them what our services cost (usually a range because of sliding fees) so that they are prepared to, kou know, PAY.  Since we have to keep the lights on and pay our staff and such.  People are always shocked (SHOCKED!) to be told that a full screening for STDs (that is an office visit and at least 4 labs) will cost them a couple hundred bucks. 

I always want to tell them to call their primary care provider and ask what it would cost there.  I whole lot freakin’ more, I promise you that.  But people never find out what services cost when they are insured and they certainly don’t find out upfront, so we get people with this crazy sticker shock response just cause the patient has never had someone be honest with them about the cost of healthcare services before.

People are always shocked (SHOCKED!) to be told that a full screening for STDs (that is an office visit and at least 4 labs) will cost them a couple hundred bucks.

And that’s why we have such a high rate of STDs in this country. Getting tested is the equivalent of a month’s rent. Or a paycheck. Countries with nationalized healthcare don’t have that problem—-people can get tested and treated without that huge financial penalty.

That’s what this Fuckstain CEO doesn’t get—-high deductibles mean no healthcare. People still don’t earn enough money to pay for it. Comments like “This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully.”—-for fuck’s sake. He has no clue what $2500 means to the average person. He has no clue how careful the average person is with money, and how careful we have to be with our money, because we don’t have very much of it. Healthcare savings accounts? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.

I’m speechless.  Damn.  And I thought Wild Oats was evil*.  Who knew that the CEO of the company that bought them was even worse.  I don’t think I’ll be shopping at evil grocery store mark II anymore.

*I worked at a Wild Oats.  Of all the places I worked at, they treated their employees the worst.  From minor things like requiring us to clock in _exactly_ on time (which not even fast food expects) to major things like making us use unsafe bungie cords to bring in the carts they sucked.  Though the intimidation interview when I turned in my resignation really took the cake.  They had someone drive down from Boulder to try to convince me all my complaints were wrong.  I wish I’d contacted a labor law expert to find out what they were doing that was so illegal that they were afraid I’d…do whatever it was they were so afraid I’d do.  I wish I had.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot the fact that Wild Oats frequently used things like high fructose corn sweetener in their products.  Lovely, lovely place.

Healthcare savings accounts are for recurring medical treatment or medicine that you know in advance you’ll use. It’s an extension of the medical tax deduction, basically. But like Lubu said, what the hell good is that to someone who doesn’t have any money to throw aside in advance for medical expenses? So we don’t have to pay federal income tax on money we don’t have. Gee, thanks.

Flexible-spending accounts come out of your pretax income, and the withholding is spread throughout the year. That’s all nice, but it isn’t insurance and it doesn’t give you a break on your medical costs. And it’s $3500 a year, I believe, which is a lot less than CEO Assbag allows his employees. (I refuse to call him “Fuckstain” because a fuckstain is actually associated with a positive, pleasureable activit.)

Who are these people that need to be “careful” with their first $2500 in health care expenses, lest they use it all up? I can’t remember any times I’ve thought, “gee, I would like to go to the doctor, but I guess if I had to be careful about it, I wouldn’t go, because I don’t really need to see him.” If I need to see a doctor, it’s because I have to see a doctor! If I had another option, I would do that, because seeing a doctor is burdensome enough on me as it is.

HSAs are a consistent scam because they’re sold to patients as offering something for nothing: the promise that you’ll save lots and lots of money on your health care premiums AND get to do a lot of health care spending tax free.

Flexible spending accounts are even more of a scam because unless you have some very consistent, known health care expenses over the course of the year, you run the risk of losing your contributions because they don’t roll over, year-to-year. The insidious part of the scam is that the FSAs profit off a layman trying to gauge his risk and predicted expenses better than a professional actuary would.

Bastard just lost my family’s business, plus that of as many folks as I can possibly alert about this. Time for a boycott, methinks…

I’m glad John Mackey keeps talking, because the more people who understand what their money being spent at Whole Paycheck is going to fund, the more people will stop giving this idiot their money.  I think he had a great idea as a Libertarian - find something Liberals With Money are wiling to spend money on and give it to them at an inflated price.

Whole Paycheck is a blight on labor - they’re just plain awful.  I’d rather support the unionized local supermarkets (who now finally carry good organic and hormone free produce and dairy and meats - and around here some decent wheat-free pastas, crackers and breads as well) than give a single dime to Mackey and his business.  I decided a while back that if I couldn’t find it at the supermarket or Trader Joe’s, and if I couldn’t order it online, I probably could do without.  And you know, that’s exactly the case.

Keep talking Mackey - let everyone know exactly what their money is going towards funding.  I hope you choke on your own words eventually you scumbag.

Another thing about HSAs is that they’re like an IRA or a 529 college plan in that how much you earn depends on what it’s invested in.  If you want to make sure that you don’t lose money you have to invest in safe things like the money market or gov’t bonds that don’t have high growth potential.  OTOH you can put your money in riskier mutual funds and stock but you take the chance of losing your shirt when the market dips and that may be just when you need your HSA.  It’s not like retirement where you can adjust your investments over time and (hopefully) it’ll work out. 

And oh yeah, fees.

These people remind me of Marie Antionette’s court. So insulated from what happens to us people today.

Flexible spending accounts are even more of a scam because unless you have some very consistent, known health care expenses over the course of the year, you run the risk of losing your contributions because they don’t roll over, year-to-year.

Ironically, FSAs are making me spend more money on health care than I otherwise would.  I put too much money aside this year, so now I’m thinking about getting my eyes checked and even having my wisdom teeth removed (they bother me off and on, but if it weren’t for the FSA, I’d probably just tough it out a while longer).  FSAs are such a scam.

keshmeshi - lots of ordinary things you get at the pharmacy (such as contact-lens solution) are eligible too. Many drugstores will put a little notation on the receipt.

FSAs are not a scam for me, because we have huge freaking medical expenditures that aren’t covered by insurance.  It’s a little helpful to be able to pay for them with pretax dollars. They’re NOT in any way a substitute for decent health coverage, which is what CEO Assbag is pretending.

Agreed, mythago. I don’t have an FSA, but I did some number-crunching and if I put aside the limit I’d still run out of money at the end of the month (i.e., in my case, anyway, an FSA is not a scam.)

I can’t believe that the CEO of grocery store chain could possibly be this clueless about the economic realities of most of his own freaking employees.  I have no idea what the shelf-stocker at a Whole Foods makes, but I imagine it isn’t enough for them to be able to pay for a $2500 deductible or to put one red cent into a health savings account.

I mean, do the math… shelf-stocker is making, what $8/hr, working 35 hours per week, for a whopping $280/week, before any deductions whatsoever?

Someone who barely takes home $1,000/month in income with a high-deductible plan isn’t gonna be going to get routine preventative care (for which they’ll pay entirely out of pocket up to $2500) when they can barely afford rent, food, and transportation costs.

What a moron.

I can’t believe that the CEO of grocery store chain could possibly be this clueless about the economic realities of most of his own freaking employees.  I have no idea what the shelf-stocker at a Whole Foods makes, but I imagine it isn’t enough for them to be able to pay for a $2500 deductible or to put one red cent into a health savings account.
I mean, do the math… shelf-stocker is making, what $8/hr, working 35 hours per week, for a whopping $280/week, before any deductions whatsoever?
Someone who barely takes home $1,000/month in income with a high-deductible plan isn’t gonna be going to get routine preventative care (for which they’ll pay entirely out of pocket up to $2500) when they can barely afford rent, food, and transportation costs.
What a moron.

But DTG, in our Glorious New Service Economy(TM) employees are the most fungible assets.  You can replace a sickly one quite easily and never have to trouble your beautiful mind with how s/he fared.  It’s not like we’re talking about a cash register or refrigerator or something with value!

If another store would carry the local tofu and the wider range of tvp products and flours I like to eat, I probably wouldn’t visit Whole Foods so much.

Alas, no one does, so I visit there every couple months or so.  I can get the overpriced vegetables locally, and I can select Korean, Chinese, Japanese or Pakistani stores to get other local and imported products… But none of them specialize in white-folk vegetarian food.

Health Savings Accounts are pretty much only for rich people.  You can’t actually put enough in one to pay for any major health issue… They’re so rich people can put away a few bucks to pay for their High Deductible.

Everyone else doesn’t have the throw round cash to hide it in case of a specific rainy day.

Oh, and you have to be able to itemize your taxes, too.  Which sucks if you have a disapproved household, so that you never actually qualify for any of the items.

Here’s the problem.  You have alternatives when it comes to food and shelter.  You can go to different doctors, but you’re seeking the same thing with the same rough cost no matter where you go - it’s just a matter of who you get it from.

Umm, no. Here’s the problem: Mackey says people have no right to food or shelter, and you accept this premise!

DRF09 - I don’t, actually, but the fundamental problem with his contention, even apart from right or not, is that health care is not like food or shelter.  It’s not like any other commodity we encounter - ever.  And treating it like food or shelter is a step away from treating it like your car or your dog.

FSAs are not a scam for me, because we have huge freaking medical expenditures that aren’t covered by insurance.

You’re right. There are certain people for whom FSA work for: like if you have a few prescriptions you have to renew every month, in which case even paying the copays through your FSA saves you some money. If you’re guessing how much you’re going to spend every year and hoping you don’t overcontribute in the hopes that you save a few dollars in taxes, you’re basically engaging in a combination of low-stakes gambling and actuarial calculations. And if being an actuary is what I wanted to do with my life, I’d have done that. Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh, as they do work out for some people.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement

Yes, how dare those uppity poor people think they’re entitled to not die?  They’re clearly getting too spoiled.

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any.

While the Constitution might not guarantee a right to food an shelter, we still have those rights.  In fact, the free market doesn’t work at all for the people who need these things the most.  That is why we have welfare and food stamps. 

Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Whoever wrote this sounds like a typical Libertarian.  It’s naive to think that a significant amount of people will choose to donate money to this cause.  Libertarians are especially selfish, so I’m very surprised that they would pretend to have so much faith in the charity of others.

Catgirl - we can’t even get people to commit $3 to the Presidential Election Fund when they don’t have to pay for it.

These people remind me of Marie Antionette’s court. So insulated from what happens to us people today.

Actually, I think of Marie Antoinette every time someone says that if the peasants don’t have insurance, then let them go to the Emergency Room!

<b>re: Jesse Taylor @ 53—<b>

I don’t, actually, but the fundamental problem with his contention, even apart from right or not, is that health care is not like food or shelter.

I disagree completely. The fundamental problem with his contention is that it stems from his obvious belief that you are entitled in this life only to what you can get and keep, through whatever means don’t personally offend or affect him, and that anything else you get that he doesn’t think you ‘earned’ you should be deeply grateful for an shut the fuck up about wanting anything else.

Healthcare is a lot like food and shelter - it’s a basic life necessity. The actual health care industry and the economics of health care are cetainly different from those of food and housing (which are not themselves greatly similar, I will note!). Ensuring that the basic necessities of all people (safety, food, shelter, medical care, freedom, justice) are met is about the only reason to have civilization in the first place - otherwise we can all drop off the grid and play post-apocolyptic survival horror fantasy.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense to engage on that asshole’s terms.

Crissa - rich people have a “high deductible”? Rich people are rich, and probably don’t have crappy high-deductible plans. They also have way better tax shelters.  But hey, you’re apparently young and healthy, you probably can’t imagine that anyone would have actual, real medical bills looming instead of a theoretical “rainy day”.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense to engage on that asshole’s terms.

I apologize for not making every available argument in the original post.  I will strive to do better.

Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

Except that they have virtually no impact on medical costs, and are growing far slower than medical inflation.  There is that.

Lawsuits are the reason doctors pay half their salary just for the insurance to be protected from them, if they didn’t have to pay so much for the insurance (because lawsuits become less ruinous) that paves the way to pay doctors less overall (though they still make the same profit, overall), which means that a doctors visit is less expensive. How does that not effect medical costs?

Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

The problem here was that companies are required to give an ‘all or nothing’ plan and then people couldn’t afford it because the plan included unnecessary stuff that people would usually opt out of like chiropractic, dental, and podiatrics. Obviously some people might need that, but not everyone so there would be several tiered plans. Either way the essentials would be covered, but the extras would be left up to preference.

Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. ..

Why would showing you what you’re paying for automatically reduce your standard of care? Unless you assume people would choose the less expensive option even if its wise, but, isn’t that their choice? Theres certainly nothing innately wrong with letting people see where their money goes…

That being said, a $2500 deductable? I couldn’t pay that…

I’ve seen some plans with a $5000 deductible.

Either way the essentials would be covered, but the extras would be left up to preference.

I highly doubt that.  You’re making the mistake of assuming that insurance companies are operating in good faith.  The problem is, people who are insured are already missing out on “essentials” because the insurance company decides that they’d rather not cover that.  In reality, what would end up happening is that insurance companies would charge the same price, but cover virtually nothing.

So, basically what Mackey’s saying is that wouldn’t it be great if people would just stop being so effing POOR all the time?

Yeah, thanks for that, buddy.

Here’s my point-by-point refutation of the op-ed: http://bit.ly/zAMsN

RE: Jesse Taylor @61—
I apologize for not making every available argument in the original post.  I will strive to do better.

Oh, w/e. Here’s a tissue!

The post was enjoyable, even had me laughing to this point, but the issue I had wasn’t a matter of you making one of a number of acceptable arguments. It was making the wrong argument altogether because, if only for sake of argument, you accept without qualification the basic premise that health care, food, and shelter are not basic rights of individuals. Worse, in arguing that health care economics are so dysfunctional that they can’t be compared to food and shelter, you accept that the economics of food and shelter are very similar to one another, and at least tacitly endorse his position that the economics of those two items are not themselves dysfunctional and in need of re-examining! It’s not just “not the best” argument, it’s actively harmful to what I perceive as our shared desired outcome from all this—improvements in accessibility, outcomes and affordability of care for all.

The pattern of moving to engage in good faith (by accepting their false premises) with those who have no interest in returning the favor is incredibly frustrating. So far this year it seems to have taken us from ‘single payer’s a nice idea’ to ‘yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking with that whole public option thing, chuck it’, and is rapidly approaching ‘well, that didn’t work, shall we try it again in 2025?’.

PS: On the off chance I misread your reply and it was intended seriously and without sarcasm, I would like to apologize.

Not trying to be a total douche about this, but it’s maddening to see this pattern repeat over and over. The ‘rugged self-sufficiency’ thing is a long-standing excuse and justification for perpetuating systems of oppression, so it’s worth addressing even when it only obviously informs the opposing viewpoint and is not explicitly mentioned as a supporting argument.

Section 8 of the Constitution states:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;...”

Note the words “general Welfare.”  Congress is suppose to provide for the “general Welfare” of the country.  How is having people going hungry, going without medical care, going without shelter—essentially going without the necessities of life—and NOT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT “providing for the general Welfare”?

Unless, of course, only Corporations count as as citizens now, instead of people ...

This is also the closest anyone has ever come to proposing an idea as stupid as the idea I had in college to rename the penny as “the orgasm”, so that people would gladly exchange valuable orgasms with each other all the time.  Mainly with me.

I’m intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Mythago @ 60, I think Crissa @51 is on our side - just a little hard to read, that was my first impression but rereading it, she’s ok…

Lawsuits are the reason doctors pay half their salary just for the insurance to be protected from them

Where on EARTH did you get this nonsense from? Not even OBs pay “half their salary” for malpractice premiums. And you don’t seem to have noticed that the point of having insurance is to pay for the defense of, and judgments in, those lawsuits. Which are filed by less than 2% of patients actually injured by malpractice, as you know.

Speaking of which, those horrible, mean lawsuits are the only recourse for people hurt by a doctor’s mistake or incompetence. The medical profession does a shit-all job of policing itself in any meaningful way. If your surgeon leaves a sponge in your abdomen, who should pay for your resulting medical bills, lost time at work and general misery? Obama?

It’s always been Whole Foods Markup, and I was in the first store on the first day that it opened and permanently stopped going several years later because of the yuppieness and later the outed hypocrisy and mote-in-the-eye blindness of its fuerher, Mackey.

Of course he can offer his employees good coverage - THEY’RE ALL FUCKING YOUNG!  What a hypocritical dolt to try to apply his limited experience to universal coverage.  Anyway, his employees’ 2500 deductible is a scam.  I doubt 5% reach that deductible in any year, making his employees cover every single nickel of their own medical care.

Macky is a self-righteous cafeteria-libertarian fundamentalist freak who can hear no argument that didn’t originate in his own convoluted mind.

I loathe him.

Re:  Comment #49: denelian on 08/13 at 04:26 AM

Yes, absolutely, there is unchecked discrimination toward people with illness from healthy people.  My wife has had a diagnosed chronic debilitating illness for 18 years now, and I have witnessed firsthand the insensitive myopia that people with decent health have toward the plight of the ill.  It’s more than just not wanting to think about someone else’s well-being; it’s more about the healthy person feeling like someone ill is in a lower caste, sort of an untouchable.  They’re the ones who are sick!

Mackey’s one-sided cafeteria-libertarian philosophy, just as its twin the Republican screw-the-poor philosophy, is selfish and actually evil, in my opinion.  He cares about no one but himself and it shows.  He’s not alone in that, but he’s definitely one of the more clueless and more obnoxious spokespeople for such bias and ignorance.

@ Comment #57: Linnaeus

This modest city liberal hadn’t heard of Mckey’s problematic politics until this.  And you’d better believe I’m not shopping at Whole Foods any more.

Perhaps Mckey has finally said enough things to make his libertarian philosophy and selfish attitude obvious.

And, naturally, I managed to spell his name wrong.  Mackey, I meant Mackey.

Crissa - rich people have a “high deductible”? Rich people are rich, and probably don’t have crappy high-deductible plans. They also have way better tax shelters.  But hey, you’re apparently young and healthy, you probably can’t imagine that anyone would have actual, real medical bills looming instead of a theoretical “rainy day”.

mythago, wtf did you get that idea?

Health Savings Accounts are scams, because the amount you can save ($5K) isn’t enough to cover more than a visit to the hospital for a couple stitches.  It isn’t enough to cover any sort of surgery or large medical expense you might actually have to save up for!  Do you really ‘save up’ to pay this month’s prescription or clinic hours?  No, you pay them the same way you pay any other bill, as it comes.

Rich people can have high deductibles - Because being on insurance means they get the cheaper bill, and they don’t care if they are hit with a high momentary bill.  Which is, as I pointed out, cheaper than if you didn’t have the insurance in the first place.  High deductibles do poor people no good, because they don’t have thousands laying around to pay the deductible when it comes up several times a year.

Yeah, I’m young and healthy.  Enough so that I’ve been told by hospitals that they do not treat people like me.  Great.  So healthy.  I wonder how you got the idea that I don’t have >$2500 in prescriptions a year.

This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully

“Wait! OMG don’t put me in that ambulance! I have to be FRUGAL!”

*bangs head on desk*

Crissa, wtf are you getting this stuff? Rich people don’t NEED to have “high deductibles”. High deductibles are a tradeoff for low premiums. Which, you know, are important to poor people. It’s not a question of whether it does you no good. If all you can afford is a $500 a month insurance payment, then that’s what you get, even if it means you have a plan with a $5000 deductible and “co-insurance” and exclusion of really rare and unusual medical conditions, like pregnancy.

Apparently you are so well-off and so not in need of health care that you cannot fathom a lifestyle where the amount you save in an FSA can make or break you. My FSA spreads the full amount of the course of the year and is taken out a little at a time. So instead of having to spend $100 out of pocket for an emergency co-pay, or $500 to my kid’s dentist, I can use the little FSA debit card. Maybe blowing $500 out of one paycheck is chump change to you. It isn’t to me.

I probably shop at Whole Foods once every two years (let’s hear it for Wheatsville!), but I am never shopping there again now.  This asshole isn’t getting a cent of my money ever again.

Find your local cooperative grocery here: http://www.coopdirectory.org/directory.htm

Actually, no, I want single payer health care.
But if I can’t get that than I actually agree with him on one point, I would like to know how much my doctor’s visit is going to cost before I go in.  I know, I know, if they think I have cancer and have to run additional tests versus being totally fine, things might be a little different.  But what is so wrong with having a sign posting like cavity fillings before insurance $110, wellness check up $108.  Or better yet in-network negotiations with Aetna wellness check up $50, with BCBS $40.  If the doctors know my sh!t insurance plan (hsa/high deductible- for those curious) can’t they give me an estimate of what its going to run me?  I know that if any major medical problem happened to me, I’d probably be financially ruined, but I would like to be able to plan at least for the routine problems in my daily life.  It’s such a scam, come in- we’ll treat you- and then we’ll through whatever number we want at you because well you agreed to pay it.

Just want to assure people who are lucky enough to live near a Trader Joe’s that they treat their employees VERY well.  My spouse just resumed working there part-time, and after three months, he will now get the FREE employee health insurance next month, and be able to add the rest of us in the family for—get this—$99/per check—$198/month! He worked for them before, so we know it’s great coverage, includes dental and vision, and just a $20 co-pay for any doctor visit. I’m not sure about the drug coverage because we haven’t needed any prescriptions. I’m not sure how they can do this (perhaps it is because they are owned by a German family and they think people should have healthcare?) but there are a number of older people who have worked at the stores where my spouse has worked, so it can’t all be age.  Also, there are lots of people who work there, or have it as a second job, just because of the health coverage.  They also have decent retirement benefits, vacations, and a 10% discount. All for part-time employees. Full time employees have it better, but not a lot better.

So, shop at Trader Joe’s instead, and try to get a job there if you need health coverage!

I haven’t ever been in a Whole Foods store, but now I’m all curious and I want to go visit one in person.  However, I’ll probably wait until the next time I’m sick, hacking and coughing and spewing all kinds of nasty gooey germy phlegm.

What?  There’s something objectionable about me making my own personal health care decisions, e.g. shall I stay in bed under the blankets or wander around in public wheezing and sneezing?  You mean my personal health care issues aren’t actually only just my business, but are instead a public issue?  No, that can’t possibly be; it clearly contradicts all the inveterate axioms of Randism!