radical health care idea - eat your veggies!

This article is a couple of weeks old, but good thoughts at any point ...

The CEO of Whole Foods Market had a column in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, outlining his thoughts on health care reform. His position is that obviously it's needed, but his ideas are quite different from the legislation in Congress right now. He has 8 specific suggestions relating to cost transparency, Health Savings Accounts, and insurance regulation. And then he makes the Captain Obvious statement of the year:

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 seriously - how many people need to have it pounded into their brains that their poor health can be improved not by going to the doctor and taking 15 pills a day, but by taking a walk and eating somewhere besides Applebee's?

Kathleen Parker in the Washington post commented on his column, and I love this quote from her:

A good rule for food consumption also applies to federal legislation: If you read the label (or the bill) and can't make sense of the contents, it's probably not good for you. Take 2-hydroxybiphenyl, for instance. Or acetylated distarch phosphate. Yum.

But let's hear it for the government plan supporters! They're threatening to boycott Whole Foods - their favorite organic grocery store, no less - because the CEO supports the evil Republican ideas for health care reform. If you don't support universal government health care with all your heart and soul, you are evil and heartless and ... holy crap, the sanctimonious attitude of these people is really getting to be nauseating.