An internal letter from John Mackey (Whole Foods)

I have a lot of friends working for Whole Foods - this was sent to me by one of them.

I think John Mackey is one of the great CEOs of our generation.

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Hi Everyone,

By now I am sure you have all asked the question, "why did John write the op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal and why now?" This is a fair question and I want to share with you my reasons.

First off, after reading the proposed Health Care Reform Bill currently before Congress, I realized our current Whole Foods health plan would be made illegal if this Bill is enacted and we would be forced to discontinue it. Think about that for a second – an incredibly successful and self-funded insurance plan voted on by our Team Members would not be allowed by the government! That made no sense to me.

Shortly afterwards, I was asked to write up my views on health care reform and knowing that President Obama had encouraged responsible debate by asking citizens for their views and ideas on health care reform, I felt that this was the perfect opportunity to share my opinions and ideas. I would be fulfilling my duty as a citizen to share my thoughts and I would be defending what I feel is the best sustainable health care plan for all of our Team Members. That is why I wrote the op-ed piece.

My intention was to introduce some important ideas about health care reform into the debate, which were largely being ignored by the media. And, while I know it is a controversial subject, I certainly never imagined the response that we have received both for and against. CEO's write op-ed pieces all the time about important issues that affect their companies so I didn't feel like I was doing anything particularly unusual. In fact, just two months before, Steven Burd, the CEO of Safeway, also wrote an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal advocating market based solutions to our health care problems and it caused no controversy at all!

Here is the reference to his article in case you are interested--http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html.

Safeway is doing some very good things to encourage wellness for their employees that we hope to emulate and improve on at Whole Foods.

I hope this helps you to understand why I wrote the op-ed piece. I'm sorry that the article has created such tremendous controversy and has proven to be a major distraction from our core business. That certainly wasn't my intention. Thank you for the extra work and effort everyone has been making recently to deal with this unexpected controversy. Like all of you, I'm hopeful that things will return to normal in the near future.

Sincerely,

John