Whole Foods Market Inc.'s CEO John Mackey's views on health care reform.
I couldn't agree more with him.
My favorite passage -
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.
And after reading his thoughts, I had a few of my own.
Dig in or get out now, cuz this one goes awhile.
P.S. If you're a Boomer, but this following piece doesn't describe you, then good for you. No offense intended. You're the one responsible person of your generation.
As I write this, my Saint Bernard is thirty pounds overweight, most likely, because I am about thirty pounds overweight.
I once read a quote, “If your dog is out of shape its because you’re not getting enough exercise.” Truer words were never written.
It’s likely that you couldn’t care less about the physical condition of my Saint Bernard, or me for that matter, and yet, you should. But not for the reasons you may think.
The hot topic among patrons of my pharmacy this weekend was health care and more specifically, our President’s plan for how to overhaul it.
We opened at 10A.M. and seven, yes seven customers commented on the price of their prescriptions by one o’ clock, in a negative, blaming tone. Their tone and inflection implying that our President and government was somehow behind the price they were paying at my register.
I started making tick marks on a piece of scratch paper.
By three o’ clock, I assumed many had either read the same article in the paper or been watching the same doomsday commercials on T.V. before arriving at my counter, because they all shared a similar sentiment. According to them, the world of medicine (specifically pharmacy) had gone to shit overnight because of some evil masterstroke our new President was anxious to unleash upon the innocent society of aged Americans. (Don’t ask me how anyone can believe that something in the future, ‘will happen’ and yet, can ‘be happening’ simultaneously)
Anyway, a number of issues sprang to mind as I listened to these folks, powerless to speak my mind with a logical rebuttal for fear of losing my job for refuting their asinine beliefs.
1. Really, how could anyone believe one person could be behind a plan this large?
2. How could anyone not see some level of personal responsibility to a situation of this magnitude?
3. Where the hell does your sense of entitlement come from?
Cocktail at the ready and seated now, I reflect on this weekend’s conversations and commentary and here’s how I see it. Me and roughly 45 million (Gen X) vs. your almost 80 million.
By demographic, (I checked ages after they left) Baby-Boomers were responsible for every single complaint lodged at my pharmacy over the weekend, all forty-one of them. Or, to put it into perspective, one complaint every forty-three minutes for the eighteen hours I was behind the counter.
My remarks here are intended for all, but for cornering me with your uninformed, biased rhetoric and ill-conceived views, my remarks are directed primarily at you Boomers.
1. Butch up you pussies. My grandfather’s generation survived a depression and war, the likes of which you can’t seem to fathom. Read a history book before you get back to me about how hard you think you’ve had it.
Men and women just happy to have survived the calamities of their era spawned you.
The “Silent Generation” knew real hardship, as opposed to you who bitch incessantly about bills you’ve created, and mortgage payments you should never have qualified for in the first place.
My grandparents saved old bread wrappers and rubber bands for Gods sake. They understood the concepts of self-reliance and saving for a rainy day and unforeseen trouble. (Your irresponsible choices have bound me to their fate as well)
Yet somewhere along the way, you developed a sense of entitlement, a belief that your generation was special and that your fellow man should support much if not all of your lifestyle outside of personal entertainment expenditures.
As a group, you are the living personification of Aesop’s Fable, “The Grasshopper and the Ant.”
2. Only a generation handed everything would be lazy enough not to personally investigate a topic before openly criticizing it.
My grandfather is dead and gone. He gave the last full measure a man can give to provide for his family and country and managed to do it independent of government subsidy or lengthy, selfish diatribe.
He took pride in paying his own way and respected others who did the same. He lived his adult life in debt to no man or country. More importantly, he only spoke to an issue once he had investigated it at length.
Where as you, through poor planning and sheer numbers, have ensured that no single generation following you could support the weight of your excesses and debts, yet you still believe (as far as your comments to me were concerned) that future generations should foot the bill for your continued existence as you embrace decrepitude, with no rationale for your argument.
You’re angry at potentially being “cut off” but you have no solid platform to argue from, away from selfishness.
In short, by your reasoning, because natural selection didn’t eliminate you, society should celebrate your continued existence through monetary contribution. Failing that, “the system” should be blamed.
Despite their being the more fiscally responsible generation, you abandoned the wisdom of the generation preceding you. My generation is just as anxious to abandon the long prevailing idiocy of yours, and return to the more pragmatic way of life this nation once knew.
3. Contrary to what “Boomers” say to my face, as a generation they suck as financial planners the current economic state of our country is evidence of that.
True, no one group should be subject to blame alone, but by your own admission, you’re far and away the majority and therefore deserving of the lion’s share of the blame.
A friend in financial planning tells me that he has never seen so many people as he does now. Coming to him in their mid-to late fifties, with nothing saved, and no desire to work past 62, expecting him to slide a retirement prospectus back across his desk, able to carry them until they shuffle off the mortal coil. Maybe that’s why they dubbed your generation, “the dreamers.”
If you haven’t left by now, you’re either with me here, or trying to find your teeth, because you’ve spit them out in a fit of blind rage, cursing my existence.
In sort, pay your own way.
You probably don’t care that me and my Saint Bernard are pudgy.
Further, you probably don’t want to foot the bill for our eventual weight related medical issues. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Prior to banging out this rant, I read John Mackey’s OP-ED piece in the Wall Street Journal. John and I are on the same page.
In short, expect to pull your own weight and expect others to do the same and everything will even out.
To be sure, some will make it and some won’t, but that’s life without a false sense of entitlement.
Until then remember, you chose this mess you’re in. You chose your shitty health care plan. You chose that new luxury sedan with the bumper sticker that reads, “Spending our children inheritance.” You may have meant it as a joke but the world now sees you meant it.
And my personal advice to all of you who hit me up this weekend, with your lengthy tirades… shut up and let my generation get on with the business of cleaning up the mess you created or quit circling the drain.
I'm off to walk my dog.
