More Personal Responsibility

John Mackey is co-founder and the CEO of Whole Foods, a nationwide health-food store. As a vegetarian, he supports good health through good personal choices, including eating a better diet. He recently published an essay on health care reform in the Wall Street Journal which is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in
deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social
Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next
15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of
other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either
going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt
us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country
needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of
billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a
government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to
achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government
control and more individual empowerment.