Healthcare Debate: Let's Have A Show Of Hands

"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."

-- John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc. - which is now facing a much-deserved (but extremely-misguided) boycott, because he wrote this piece - and not because Whole Foods sells over-priced, and worthless, crap (like "organic" foods and homeopathic "medicines") to capitalize on the stuck-up attitudes of liberals, which (of course) he never mentions in The Wall Street Journal.

"Whole Foods has always marketed itself to a fairly educated and financially secure customer base. This is why they can successfully sell healthy (and primarily organic) foods, at a higher cost. The company has also fostered the image that it has an altruistic streak in supporting progressive causes.

With a single op-ed in an uber conservative national newspaper, this wholesome image has been blown to bits. In the course of writing 1,165 words, CEO Mackey has caused more potential damage to the Whole Foods corporate image than an e-coli outbreak in the meat room."

-- Richard Blair, endorsing that much-deserved (but extremely-misguided) boycott - making me wonder if there's a connection between being "fairly educated" (as opposed to well-educated) and "financially secure" in the NewAge liberal world - though, as if I needed it, this is more evidence one can be stupid and speak in The Moderate Voice.

"What delusion! I'll bet the liberals and progressives keep going to Whole Foods, which is about a high-quality selection of goods sold in a pleasant, slightly posh environment. I don't think people are going there to make a political statement, and I don't think people will boycott it to make a political statement — or at least not to make a statement about their support for health care reform, which, you may note, people are not fired up about. People are fired up against the legislation, and Whole Foods may gain some new customers, but we longtime Whole Foods shoppers go there for personal benefit and indulgence (which may include [a] smidgen of feeling good about greenness and 'fair trade')."

-- Ann Althouse, answering Mr. Blair's stupid post, while ignoring that it's probably the American Boomer's constant need for such indulgence, as well as supporting idiotic causes like "greenness and 'fair trade'", that's gotten us into this financial mess - Babies (of the Boomer type) always need a new rattle shaken in front of their faces, don't they? - adopting The Macho Response, while staying constantly amused (and also amusing) in the Althouse.

"Ive never been to Boujis or any of those places. Not once. Posh people with no taste? No thank you."

-- Coco Sumner, daughter of Sting (and the world's latest wannabe-a-star-because-daddy-is) on why she doesn't hang out with Prince William and Prince Harry, the sons of that NewAge loony, Prince Charles - who is one of the world's chief proponents of worthless organic foods and homeopathic "medicines" - providing my last word on this post about Obamacare, being "posh", and the rest of this whole (Foods) mess, in The Daily Mail.