by David Harlow
Today’s health care communications lesson is brought to you courtesy of Whole Foods … I mean John Mackey.
John Mackey’s stepped in it again. Last week, Mackey, the libertarian CEO of natural-foods behemoth Whole Foods, wrote an op-ed piece on health reform for The Wall Street Journal. But Mackey felt it necessary to republish it on his blog because the Journal editors lightly edited it, Journal headline writers wrote a catchy headline for it, and Mackey was concerned that folks might attribute some of the sentiment in the piece to the company, not just to the CEO.
The gist of the piece: health care is not a right, everyone needs to take more personal responsibility for their own health (including, utilizing health savings accounts, exercise, eating well … shopping at Whole Foods, perhaps?) and if you want to do something more, make a donation via your tax return to fund public health insurance programs like Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP. And he opened with a Margaret Thatcher quote: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Setting aside the question of whether one agrees with Mackey’s views on health care reform, one has to question the man’s judgment. He is apparently pretty good at running a Fortune 500 company. However, his op-ed has resulted in an avalanche of reaction, much of it negative, from comments on the WSJ site, to comments on his own blog (where he republished the piece with its “original” title — “Health Care Reform” — which the Journal had replaced with “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare”), to the blogosphere, to mainstream media.
So, what’s wrong with this picture? Mackey should know by now that (a) many, if not most, folks will identify a very public CEO with the major corporation he leads and (b) if he espouses views contrary to those embraced by his company’s historical, largely liberal activist, customer base he will get the boycott messages that have been posted online, and more customers than those who post will join the boycott. As my kids would say, insisting that the op-ed views are his and not his company’s is lame. A couple more on-line missteps, and perhaps Mackey and his company will not be able to so easily recover.
What can a business leader — in health care as well as in natural foods retailing — learn from this experience? That, no matter how forward-thinking one may be, on-line communications must follow a few simple rules, including the following tenets of social media:
* Authenticity is key, but if your authentic self is likely to alienate core constituencies, think again about what you’re trying to do. If you need a cleanup squad maybe you shouldn’t be the public face of your organization.
* Remember that you do not control the message; all on-line communications may be read by anyone and referred to anywhere (even if not initially published in a leading national newspaper).
* Be prepared to engage with your constituencies on their terms, not yours.
* If you have a big megaphone, be sure you use it to enhance, not detract from, your brand.
David Harlow is a health care lawyer and consultant who blogs at HealthBlawg.
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Good for him. At least some one out there is standing up and speaking the truth. Health care is not a right. If any thing it will more likely make me want to shop there. Whole foods embodies the the antithesis of fast food.
I am motivated to shop at WF because of his Op-Ed.
I guess that I have to disagree with Mr. Harlow about this, although his advice does seem to reasonate in the business and health care communities nowadays. “Authenticity is key”…unless you’re too authentic…Ha! But that’s just it. Has anyone listened to modern CEOs talk about anything recently? They have to be the most boring and uninformative people nowadays.
I actually appreciate the honest views of CEOs like Mackey or Warren Buffet or others who are not afraid to ruffle some feathers, even if I don’t agree with them (although I concur with just about everything Mackey wrote in the WSJ). In my experience, real leaders don’t care what the consultants tell them.
BTW, you talked about alienating customers. Like Megan McArdle, I don’t think Mackey’s article will have much effect in lowering WFs profitshare…I never shopped there until reading the “WFs Alternative to ObamaCare.” However, I have been twice in the last week and, on both occasions, the market was packed.
I admire Mackey’s courage. Sure, he may lose his job. But he figures that a government take-over of Medicine would be even worse.
Check out this video where AMA physicians answer patient questions about health system reform and debunk some of the myths that are still out there. http://www.hsreform.org
John, if you lose your job you should run for the Senate, you got my vote!
Now repeal EMTALA and we will not be responsible for the care that people decided not to insure themselves for. We physicians have been on the hook for years through hospital bylaws and CON requirements REQUIRING US to subsidize the cost and care in emergency AND non emergency situations. John would also have my vote.
@AMA- I am a member of the AMA, for now. The truth is AMA leadership is either highly naive or dishonest about health care reform. To argue that it is not possible for reform to devolve into socialized medicine is to ignore Obama’ s and the Democratic Leadership’s true, core beliefs.
Obama has not been shy in the past about his desire for a single-payer program. The Dems have not hid this either. They have even stated that the road to a single payer system would likely require a slow, incremental process instead of all at once.
As for rationing of care, Obama stated with regards to his grandmother that while he would pay for her hip replacement, he did not think it should be the duty of society to do so since it is a high cost procedure, she was elderly and had cancer. This indicates that if the system needs cuts, limiting services for those deemed lower contributors to society, or past a certain age to deserve certain services.
This Democratic plan is meant to be a step leading towards a single payer system. This is the truth despite how anyone wants to spin it. It is obvious when you look at what the administration’s true views about this are. Also look at the writings of his health care advisers. One does not even believe infants are “humans”. Another believes that it takes ~14- 85 year olds to equal 1 fifteen year olds life.
Oh, good… we have some government takeover doom and gloomers commenting here. All this repetition of the claim that establishing a public option will inevitably snowball into full-on government takeover due to some least common denominator effect has me wondering about something; perhaps you can educate me:
The only thing approaching a counter-proposal I’ve seen to the public option goes along the lines of the McCain “plan” – allow insurance to be sold across state borders, give a tax rebate of some sort, and let the market decide. Because of the differences among state regulations of insurance plans, wouldn’t you also find some “least common denominator” effect in this scenario? If you expect businesses would dump their employees into the public plan due to cost concerns, wouldn’t they be just as inclined to dump their employees into the cheapest possible plan available from Delaware, or Nevada, or whichever state offers the
fewest consumer protectionsleast regulation on health insurance policies? Sure, you’ve avoided “government control”, but is that situation really any better? Couldn’t you instead suggest provisions that would prevent a public option from anti-competitive behavior (undercutting costs, significant operating losses)? Or do you really believe the private insurance industry has so little to offer that nobody would resist employers dumping private plans?Also, great to see the compassion from “physicians” shining through in these comments. Really inspires advocacy for your cause. I assume Dr. KVC is only an AMA member “for now” because he’ll soon be out of the field – I can’t think of any other possible future for a physician who would consider putting an elderly cancer patient through a hip replacement surgery in good conscience.
-g
Hi, Gromit.
As for “compassion”:
I work as a hospitalist, so that’s the setting with which I’m most familiar. In many hospitals, about one in ten patients admitted through the Emergency Dept. will never pay their bill; they don’t (and never will) have the money. The physicians I work with are happy to treat these people, and treat them just as well as the paying customers. As an older physician told me years ago, “You take the good with the bad.” [No that the indigent are "bad." But it's good" to get paid for your work.] To some extent, the paying customers subsidize the non-paying. Some physicians consider it a moral duty to help others in need, regardless of personal cost to the provider. It’s been like this for years. Doctors aren’t complaining about this.
But do you know of any other business that routinely provides free goods or services to 10% of people who show up at the door? Restaurants don’t. Supermarkets don’t. Lawyers don’t. Oil-change businesses don’t. Manicurists don’t. Maid services don’t. Clothing retailers don’t. Cellphone service providers don’t. Etc.
[And just try under-paying your federal taxes by 10% if money gets tight. The government will eventually send people with guns to your house to collect.]
To gromit, it’s “compassionate” to medicate granny against her will so she’ll spend the last months of her life immobile and sedated rather than to perform a palliative procedure that would allow her to spend quality time with her family. This just to save a few dollars!
Steve:
‘But do you know of any other business that routinely provides free goods or services to 10% of people who show up at the door?’
This is a good argument for single payer. If you agree – and I’m sure you do – that the US could never descend into the moral, social and indeed economic chaos of demanding that anyone pay the market rate or be left to die, then surely it’s better to take some of their taxes over time when they are able to contribute toward a national insurance system. That way there’s no question of anyone getting anything for free, bar those truly disadvantaged for work or other socially useful contributions that may be paid in kind.
As an aside, it would be interesting to cost the stress on society and the lack of wellbeing of the many millions uninsured or underinsured who have health insecurity and the drag therefore on the economy.
I don’t know. He may have learned there is no such thing as bad publicity.
I agreed with some of his points but I’d take single payer any day of the week.
Maybe in a few years we’ll see the light but too bad thousands of people will die before we do.
::sigh::
Why wasn’t I born in Canada?
Interesting about the boycott. There’s so many of those types who dan’t wrap their minds around the concept that people can have conservative philosophies and like organic food. But hey, the boycott caused me to look where our local Whole Foods is located. Not in my neighborhood, so I hadn’t patronized the place, there are plenty of other, similar stores around here. But now they will get my business when I’m in the area.
There are so many human endeavors that are done across state lines, and disputes are subject to the rules of a state other than the state of residence. Yet somehow we survive. I’ll take the Delaware or Nevada protections, thank you. New Jersey policies are particularly expensive because of regulations, and their government is hardly the model of rectitude. I don’t feel more protected.
Maybe doctors aren’t professional economists. Here’s the president of an international business. He offers his employees consumer-directed healthcare. He walks the talk. It works. It works in my own practice for that matter. There are perfectly good policy proposals for free-market reforms of healthcare. If someone claims not to have seen them it’s for lack of effort looking. But then again, over the years it has become crystal clear. The fear is not that consumer-directed healthcare will fail. The fear is that it will succeed.
“John Mackey’s stepped in it again.”
Stepped in it? It’s his opinion on how healthcare should be financed. He does precisely that in his business. He sincerely walks the talk. One would think it a good idea to actually ASK Whole Foods employees how THEY feel about their health insurance coverage. He sincerely wants people to have health insurance coverage. All he can do is keep his little corner of the world clean, and he does just that. He walks the talk.
But he has the audacity to do it in a politically incorrect manner. For that, he does not deserve to live. He just wants children to starve on the streets. He kicks puppies. Liberal intolerance in all its ugliness.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=bw-20010714:20090825005791:1&show_article=1
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=prnw.20090825.DC65782&show_article=1
I am stunned by this essay. You say that as CEO McKey should have done what exactly? Does being a CEO of a company mean that you have to keep your mouth shut if you find yourself opposed to a immoral law, because it might alienate your customer base? For crying out loud that is sophistry in its most pure state. Whole Foods is patronized by only liberals who support “health care reform”, how the hell would you know that? If Whole Foods is being boycotted for opposing what is really a law against people who wish to make a profit, what doe those who are boycotting fighting for. Taken to its logical absurd conclusion Whole
Foods should be willing to give groceries away to anyone who walks in to the store because they need to eat to live. The CEO knows that whatever stand he takes THAT is one guaranteed way to go right out of business, just give your goods away to anyone who asks for them, any time, and for any amount they wish. McKey knows how to run a business and is throwing his ideas on how to make health care affordable in to the public. So he may not get all the nuances of the new social media, who cares. Some liberals with too much time and not enough to do think that boycotting Whole Foods is going to change McKey’s mind. That is typical of liberal debate tactics, what you cannot prove or articulate you will force, at the point of a gun if needed. Which is what governments do in enacting laws. Those in health care who see a need for change may be the best people to listen to in what is wrong and what needs to change, but is that happening? A business man who knows what it costs to insure his employees health knows what he is talking about but because it does not flow with the current narrative of greedy doctors, avaricious insurance companies, mean nurses, and heartless hospital CEO’s , his message is vilified. It is a shame.
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