In his recent column “Let them eat Whole Foods,” Edgar Allen Beem lambastes CEO John Mackey for criticizing Obama’s health care plan. Beem called Mackey “predatory,” “self-centered,” “cynical” and “arrogant.” He goes on to write that Mackey “is not the sort of person customers or employees would agree with, like, or admire.” How does he know? Does Beem know, like, or admire the CEOs of most of companies he buys products from? Or did this particular CEO just have the gumption to exercise his constitutional right of free speech in editorial form, the same way Beem does every week?

It would have been nice if Beem would have at least addressed the underlying issue of health care. I can certainly can see the need for health-care reform, but am extremely concerned about having a public option with the same problems Medicare now has. I am not happy with the involvement of the insurance industry in health care at all. Nor with the ambulance-chasing lawyers who are milking the system for all its got. Anyone who has had relatives use Medicare knows about waste and duplication of services. Multiply that by the population of the USA, and you might not have death panels, but you will certainly have rationing of services. Unless we find a lot of new doctors who are willing to work for low pay, rationing is probably inevitable. Add millions more patients, and no new doctors, and you tell me what will happen.

And please tell Beem to stop the name-calling nonsense.

John A. Dow
Falmouth