Health Care Reform: Rights and Responsibilities
Private employers like Whole Foods and Safeway are providing the best examples of how more personal responsibility and less government control – getting control of health care costs by attacking the root causes of poor health – establishing personal responsibility for healthy behaviors and providing financial incentives for employees to take charge of their health – is the prescription for health care reform.
An opinion piece by
Sean Sullivan, JD
Two months to the day since Steven Burd, the CEO of Safeway, who was featured in IHPM’s previous eDitorial™, penned a powerful opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on employer-driven health reform, his industry colleague John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, appeared on the same pages with an equally powerful argument for “The Whole Foods Alternative to Obama Care.” Business leadership in the public arena on this vital national issue has been assumed by a seemingly unlikely candidate not usually in the news – the retail food industry!
Mr. Mackey goes a step farther than Mr. Burd by challenging the idea that there is an inherent “right” to health care in the United States – or any other country, for that matter. He argues that health care is a service that we need, to be provided in the best way possible. But it is not a “right” anymore than food or shelter is a “right” because rights as a matter of law must be equally enforced, and there never has been – and never will be – equal access in a timely manner to the same level and quality of health care, anywhere in the world.
In a market economy, the “rationing” device when supply exceeds demand – as it always will for health care – is the ability to pay for services, and private insurance is the financing mechanism that enables this for most working Americans. In a socialized “command” economy – which is what most developed countries have established for health care – the rationing device for "free" (i.e., taxpayer financed) health care is waiting times, often many months, for scarce services. Canada has fewer people than California, but more than 800,000 of them – those who cannot manage to cross the border and be treated in the U.S. – are waiting to be admitted to a hospital or get treatment for a medical condition. And in England the list runs to an estimated 1.8 million (I recall being at once amused and appalled during our last IHPM conference in London when a Deputy Minister of Health for the UK announced proudly that the British government was determined that no one would have to wait more than nine months – or the length of a normal pregnancy – to obtain treatment for a medical condition!).
Mr. Mackey describes the Whole Foods policy of letting employees vote on the benefits they want the company to fund, and observes that its Canadian and British employees clearly express their preferences for supplemental health care dollars they can control themselves - rather than relying on the allocation by government of everyone else's money, which is the financial modus operandi of socialism. Presumably, they would not want or need these additional health benefit dollars if they really had an intrinsic “right” to the health care they really want – which they do not in these two most socialized of all health care systems.
Mr. Mackey then turns his attention to the same subject as Mr. Burd – getting control of health care costs by attacking the root causes of poor health -- establishing personal responsibility for healthy behaviors and providing financial incentives for employees to take charge of their health. And just as employees should be financially responsible for lifestyle choices that affect their health, so they should have the freedom to choose the health care services that suit their needs. John Mackey’s prescription for health care reform is more personal responsibility and less government control – the exact opposite of what the President and the Democratic Congress are prescribing. And private employers like Whole Foods and Safeway are providing the best examples of how this kind of reform can reduce costs – by improving the health of their employees and, thereby, reducing their demand for health care services. Until we focus on the demand side of the health care market - public or private - the supply never will be enough and the costs will be too great!
Sean Sullivan, JD is a Health Care Economist and 20 year veteran of the Washington policy world who has testified before Congress and State Legislatures on Health Care Reform. He was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. To contact Sean please email deborah@ihpm.org or call 480.305.2100
