Showing posts with label Margaret Thatcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Margaret Thatcher. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2009

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare




OPINION
AUGUST 12, 2009
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

By JOHN MACKEY

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. 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.

• Equalize the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. 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. Health insurance should be portable.

• 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.

• 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.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• 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.

• 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.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

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. This “right” has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

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.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

—Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Why the Haters “Hate” Governor Palin

Hat Tip to BostonPatriot @ Thanks to Palin





Attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin by McCain campaign staff at first appear to be a case of making her a convenient scapegoat, but the attacks have a more devious motive. This post-election barrage is the first volley of the campaign to choose the Republican nominee in 2012. The Washington, D.C. based establishment that rules the GOP wants her career over now. She threatens them.

Firefighting 101 teaches it is easier to stomp out a wildfire when it is small. Don’t allow the fire to grow, spread and become an inferno. Sarah Palin was the spark of McCain’s reform campaign. She ignited the campaign and gave the reform message legitimacy.


Those knifing Palin are the old-guard Republicans who don’t want to see her as the nominee in 2012. The old-guard GOP candidates are likely Gov. Haley Barbour or former Gov. Mitt Romney.

Sarah Palin brought a vibrant, fresh face to the Republican Party. The GOP elitists saw how she easily connected with voters. Palin drew huge crowds of up to 30,000 people anxious to see and hear her. The crowds flocking to see Gov. Palin bond with her culturally. She has the potential to garner Obama- or Reagan-like devotion.

The Republican Party needs this grassroots energy and her reform agenda after a decade of broken promises and the disappointing Bush presidency.

Looking back at history, you see resemblances of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in Palin. Both Thatcher and Reagan were dismissed and insulted by their own party stalwarts. “Useful idiot” was a term once leveled at President Reagan.

Palin hails from Wasilla, Alaska; Margaret Thatcher grew up in the apartment over her family’s grocery store in a small town in England. Thatcher’s father taught her never to do things because other people were doing them. He said, “Do what you think is right and then persuade others to follow you.” Like Thatcher, Palin’s political philosophy and economic policies emphasize reduced government intervention, free markets and entrepreneurialism.

Margaret Thatcher was willing to take a hard line and earned the nickname “Iron Lady” for her tough-talking rhetoric defiantly opposing the Soviet Union. Likewise, Palin is tough enough to stand up to present-day threats. While Thatcher earned the moniker of ‘Attila the Hen,” Palin calls herself a “Pit-bull with Lipstick” and others dub her “Sarah Barracuda.”

Human, likeable, personable and witty like Reagan, with loads of common sense and confidence, Sarah Palin lives what she believes. And the camera loves her as it loved Ronald Reagan.

Grass-roots efforts are sure to encourage Palin to run in for president in 2012. Meanwhile, she trusts a higher power, saying she is, “Putting my life in my creator’s hands---that is what I always do.” She also said, “I’m like, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, …don’t let me miss the open door…And if there is an open door in ’12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

This rising star is now too bright to be extinguished by attempts at sabotage. She has addressed the criticism, setting the record straight concerning the purchase of clothes for herself and her family by the Republican National Committee, saying, “Those are the RNC’s clothes, they are not my clothes. I never forced anybody to buy anything. I never asked for anything more than maybe a Diet Dr Pepper every once in a while.” And then there’s the ridiculous rumors regarding the debate prep about NAFTA and Africa. Palin summed it up well, calling it “cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, and it’s unprofessional,” and said, “Those guys are jerks if they came away with it taking thing out of context, then tried to spread something on national news.”

Yet Palin realizes criticism is to be expected in politics. “Your life is an open book and you open yourself up to criticism and you’d better be ready to take that criticism,” she said. “In other words, don’t run for office if you can’t handle it.”

Those staffers guilty of anonymous attacks are cowards. Their agenda to control the GOP needs to be seen for what it is -- an attempt to kill the career of Sarah Palin because it threatens them. Americans can see through the falsehoods and love the real Sarah Palin. Nearly 400 letters arrive daily addressed to Gov. Palin and are now piled high in big bags waiting for her.


Floyd and Mary Beth Brown are bestselling authors and speakers. Mary Beth's latest book is featured at www.condibook.com Together they maintain a blog at www.2minuteview.com

Monday, October 13, 2008

Happy Birthday Baroness Thatcher !









American Minute - Oct. 13 - Margaret Thatcher

American Minute
with
Bill Federer



Margaret Thatcher was born OCTOBER 13, 1925.

She was the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

While traveling through New York City in 1996, Margaret Thatcher had an interview with Joseph A. Cannon, which was printed in Human Events.

She stated:

"The Decalogue-Ten Commandments-are addressed to each and every person.

This is the origin of our common humanity and of the sanctity of the individual.

Each one has a duty to try to carry out those commandments. You don't get that in any other political creed...

It is personal liberty with personal responsibility."

Margaret Thatcher continued:

"Responsibility to your parents, to your children, to your God. This really binds us together in a way that nothing else does.

If you accept freedom, you've got to have principles about the responsibility. You can't do this without a biblical foundation."

Margaret Thatcher concluded regarding America:

"Your Founding Fathers came over with that. They came over with the doctrines of the New Testament as well as the Old.

They looked after one another, not only as a matter of necessity, but as a matter of duty to their God.

There is no other country in the world which started that way."

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Thatcher leaves hospital





Immaculate as ever,
Baroness Thatcher leaves
hospital after collapsing
over the fruit jelly


Stuffy heat of Lords dining room led to former PM
being taken ill, friends reveal


Margaret Thatcher left hospital in good spirits yesterday after being kept in overnight following her collapse at a House of Lords dinner.
The former Prime Minister was said to be "on good form" and "much better" following her medical check-up.

Lady Thatcher fell ill at a function in the Lords dining room on Friday night. She appeared to be overcome by the heat and asked to go outside for some fresh air.

While leaving the room, and before she was able to get outdoors, her legs gave way. Alarmed fellow peers came to her aid and tended to her as she sat on the floor in a corridor, waiting for emergency help.

She was lifted into an ambulance on a stretcher and taken to nearby St Thomas' Hospital, where she spent Friday night.

Initially, it was feared Lady Thatcher may have suffered a repeat of the series of strokes that have left her with short-term memory loss. But friends said yesterday that they think the cause was less serious, the collapse having been sparked by a combination of her low blood pressure and the stuffy conditions in the ancient Lords dining room.

One friend said: "She's never liked the heat. Whenever she went abroad, and the temperature was over 70F, she would start fretting and Denis would say, 'She doesn't like this – let's get her somewhere cooler'."

Lady Thatcher, 82, was guest of honour at a dinner hosted by Ulster peer Lord Ballyedmond – the second richest man in Northern Ireland – on behalf of North Cumberland Conservatives.

After tucking into goat's cheese, salmon steak and fruit jelly, Lady Thatcher chatted to her dining companion, Lord Henley, who served as a junior Minister in her Government, over a glass of red wine.

Her spokesman Mark Worthington told The Mail on Sunday: "Just after she had finished her dessert at around 10.30pm, she suddenly felt queasy. She said, 'I'd like to go outside.' We were just heading for the door when her legs buckled beneath her.

Just visiting: Lady Thatcher and the Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Downing Street in September

"She slumped down and was helped out to the corridor where she sat on the floor until an ambulance arrived. A similar thing happened three years ago when she was at the hairdresser's, but the doctors are fairly sure she has not had a stroke. She chatted away to the doctors and nurses who she said were marvellous. She doesn't like all the fuss and was happy to come home. She is feeling much better."

Lady Thatcher's daughter, Carol, said: "Very wisely, at her age and with a history of minor strokes, they decided to err on the side of caution. But it's good news today. She is doing well."

Mr Worthington said Lady Thatcher's son Mark had also been kept aware of developments.

Lady Thatcher left the hospital at 1.20pm via the accident and emergency department exit and was supported on the ten-yard journey to her car by two medical staff. Wearing a maroon dress, pearl necklace and black shoes, and carrying a black handbag, she waved several times to the waiting cameras but did not respond to questions about her health.

Leaving Lady Thatcher's Belgravia home yesterday afternoon, Mr Worthington said: "She's very comfortable at home, she's sitting up and we've all been chatting away. She's on good form, much better. "The tests revealed nothing of any substance. It was just one of those things. She's going to have a quiet day and we're going to let her get a bit of rest."

Lady Thatcher gave up public speaking engagements six years ago as a result of her failing health, but it has not kept her out of controversy.

Gordon Brown upstaged the Tories – and upset many Labour MPs – by inviting her to No 10 for tea soon after he became Prime Minister.

And David Cameron was accused of shunning Lady Thatcher, who was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, in his drive to modernise the Conservative Party. But he was forced to change tack after a backlash from the Tory grassroots and he presented an award to her for her 'enormous contribution to British life' in January.

Just visiting: Lady Thatcher and the Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Downing Street in September