John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods, has jumped head first into the healthcare debate by penning an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, opening with the Margaret Thatcher quote “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” More of the typical anti-healthcare reform pablum below…

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.

Later Mackey then goes on to espouse the benefits of a healthy lifestyle by eating more fruits and vegetables.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

The irony is how can anyone afford a regular diet of fruit and vegetables from one of the most expensive grocery chains in the country? Me thinks that many of the customers who shop at Whole Paycheck, will not be amused. And they are not. Just check out a few of the forums over at the Whole Foods website. And there is already a call for a boycott.