In my last post, I wrote about how big business can promote big government for its own ends. But here is an example of a businessman promoting free markets and fundamental reform, apparently out of a fundamental belief in liberty and recognition that personal responsibility works best. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, offers his first hand experience of what works in providing health insurance to his workers and ideas for how Congress can improve the U.S. health insurance market. But my favorite paragraphs are these:
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