The federal government, through its Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, does business with scores of insurance companies. If the Office of Personnel Management wants to ask them for compensation information so it can make sure it’s spending taxpayer money efficiently (wouldn’t that be a lovely change), it could do that.
But that’s not what the Waxman-Stupak letter is about. It’s a fishing expedition, with top lawmakers seeking information they have no right to demand. Information that the lawmakers will likely turn around and use to demonize insurance executives if they decide those company leaders were paid “too much.” It’s the liberals’ version of the “politics of personal destruction,” and we’ve already seen it pop up elsewhere in the debate over health care reform.
John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Markets, recently wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal making the sensible point that pro-market reform is the way to go. He also pointed out there is no “right” to health care.
“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,” Mackey wrote. “Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an ‘intrinsic right to health care’?”
So in countries where the government runs health care, what workers want is cash to buy their own health care. That should give fans of the government’s “public option” something to think about. But many on the left don’t want to think. They want to act. They’ve called for a boycott of Whole Foods because of Mackey’s piece.
“I don’t give money to Republicans,” Ben Wyskida wrote at the Huffington Post, “so I will have to cross Whole Foods off my list.” A Facebook page devoted to boycotting the company has more than 20,000 members. Liberals boycotting Whole Foods, a company that champions liberal causes. Does it get any better than that?
The entire health care debate boils down to whether or not socialized medicine would work in the United States. It wouldn’t, and Americans seem to realize that. When cooler heads prevail, we need to convince the government to be less involved in our lives. And the sooner the better.