By gollies, the top executives of health insurance corporations are not giving up without a fight! To paraphrase every high school football coach who ever lived, “When the going gets ugly, the ugly get going.”

During the past several months, the Barons of Wall Street had established themselves as the vilest and most reviled corporate team in the land. They’ve been lavishing bonuses on themselves even as their firms continue to benefit from government bailout measures and even as ordinary Americans continue to struggle with the economic collapse caused by the bankers’ arrogance and avarice. Wall Streeters were widely considered a shoo-in to take the coveted Corporate Greedhead Trophy this year — but, holy cow, what a comeback bid we’re now seeing from the Giants of Insurance!

Let’s recap their amazing charge: Last week, the news broke that America’s five largest health insurance companies (United Health, Wellpoint, Aetna, Humana and Cigna) had scored record profits in 2009, totaling $12.2 billion. This was a stunning 56 percent hike over the previous year, a drive made all the more impressive by the fact that these gains came during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

As American families struggled financially last year, Team Insurance was able to boot 2.7 million more people out of their private health plans, leaving those folks in the corporate dust. In an even slicker, hidden-ball play, three of the five giants cut the proportion of premiums they spent on their customers’ medical care, shifting those premium dollars into corporate salaries, profits and administrative overhead. Even Wall Street’s Barons had to shake their heads in disbelief and marvel at the audacity of that play.

By the way, buried in that increase for the insurers’ administrative overhead was a little statistic that often gets overlooked: lobbying expenses. The Big Five spent $16.8 million last year to lobby against comprehensive reform of our health care system. You youngsters should take note of that, for such attention to detail is what builds a corporate champion.

The recession-time surge in insurance profits, the shedding of older and sicker customers, the lateral of more premium dollars into things like executive pay — these maneuvers alone would’ve moved health insurance up in the top tier of ugly industries. But then the industry ratcheted up its game another notch. One of Wellpoint’s subsidiaries heaved a “Hail Mary” pass that shocked everyone and catapulted insurance into a serious contender for the Greedhead Trophy.
In the same week that Wellpoint acknowledged that its 2009 profits were up by $2.3 billion over the previous year (a 91 percent increase), its Anthem Blue Cross subsidiary in California caused a sensation by seeking to raise the premiums on its customers’ policies by as much as 39 percent this year.

As befits a true Greedhead striver, Wellpoint neatly stiffed critics by asserting that this price hike was necessitated by the general increase in America’s health care costs — never mind that the corporation’s rise in premiums is actually 10 times more than the rise in the overall cost of health care. What a move!

However, whether Wellpoint’s daring California score will be allowed is in question, for there was a flag on the play. State insurance zebras are questioning the legitimacy of the increase, causing a company executive to argue heatedly that while tens of thousands of customers would indeed be socked with a 39 percent jump in their premiums, the average rate increase would be a mere 25 percent, so the play should be OK.

Come on, sports fans, ya gotta give ’em some style points just for trying to get away with that.

Still, can the upstart Insurance Giants hope to out-ugly the more-sophisticated Wall Street Barons? The great thing about Corporate America is that competition is always fierce for the national greedhead title, and insurance is now in the running. As sportscasters can tell you: Only time will tell, it’s not over ’til it’s over, tomorrow’s another day, winners never quit/quitters never win, wait’ll next year, and it’s deja vu all over again.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, “Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow.” (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly “Hightower Lowdown,” co-edited by Phillip

For more information on building health and healing with nutrient-dense foods see Performance without Pain and our new e-book on healing acid reflux.

Best in health,

Kathryne Pirtle



WHOLE FOODS PROMOTES MILITANT VEGETARIAN AGENDA

Has the Upscale Market Outlived Its Usefulness?

WASHINGTON, DC. February 3, 2010:  Whole Foods Markets has launched a nationwide “Health Starts Here” marketing scheme that endorses a lowfat, vegetarian diet, with promises that the diet will “improve health easily and naturally.” The plan promotes the books and private business ventures of Joel Fuhrman, MD, and Rip Esselstyn, both of whom worked with Whole Foods to formulate the new guidelines. Customers now receive a pamphlet urging them to adopt a lowfat, plant-based diet and to cut back or completely eliminate animal foods.  Many Whole Foods stores no longer sell books advocating consumption of meat, eggs and dairy products.

The plan will feature new Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI) labels for foods in the store; the index is designed to make plant foods to appear “nutrient dense” by favoring various phytonutrients in plants and ignoring many vitamins and minerals essential to health. “Whole Foods has stacked the deck against animal foods by choosing ANDI parameters that do not include a host of key nutrients, such as vitamins A, D and K, DHA, EPA arachidonic acid, taurine, iodine, biotin, pantothenic acid, and vital minerals like sodium, chloride, potassium, sulfur, phosphorus, copper, manganese, boron, molybdenum and chromium,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Many of the phytochemicals that Fuhrman includes in the index he developed for Whole Foods play no essential role in the body and may even be harmful.”

“Animal foods like meat, liver, butter, whole milk and eggs contain ten to one hundred times more vitamins and minerals than plant foods,” says Fallon Morell. “Plant foods add variety and interest to the human diet but in most circumstances do not qualify as ‘nutrient-dense’ foods.”

“For years before becoming deathly ill, I followed the dietary suggestions in the Whole Foods plan,” said Kathryne Pirtle, author of Performance without Pain. “I ate large amounts of organic salads, vegetables and fruits, lots of whole grains, only a little meat and no animal fat. I had chronic pain for twenty-five years on this diet, then acid reflux, then a serious inflammation in my spine followed by chronic diarrhea. Without switching to nutrient-dense animal foods, including eggs, butter and whole dairy products, not only would I have lost my national career as a performing artist, I would have died at forty-five years old! I am not alone in this story of ill health from a lowfat, plant-based diet, which does not supply a person with enough nutrients to be healthy and can be very damaging to the intestinal tract.”

“Consumers can send a message about Whole Foods’ misinformed scheme by voting with their feet,” says Fallon Morell.  “Most major grocery store chains now carry basic organic staples and a larger array of organic fruits and vegetables than Whole Foods markets. And citizens should purchase seasonal produce  and their meat, eggs and dairy products directly from farmers engaged in non-toxic and grass-based farming. It’s not appropriate for Whole Foods to promote a scheme that has no scientific basis and that bulldozes their customers towards the higher profit items in their stores.” The local chapters of the Weston A. Price Foundation help consumers connect with farmers raising animal foods in humane, healthy and ecologically friendly fashion.

“The growing emphasis on plant-based diets deficient in animal protein also serves to promote soy foods as both meat and dairy substitutes,” says Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN, author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food.   “Soy is not only one of the top eight allergens but has been linked in more than sixty years of studies to malnutrition, digestive distress, thyroid dysfunction, reproductive disorders including infertility, and even cancer, especially breast cancer.”

“Low fat patients are my most unhealthy patients,” says John P. Salerno, MD, a board certified family physician from New York City. “The reason we are spiraling into diabetes and obesity is because of the lowfat concept developed by the U.S government decades ago. Lowfat diets have a low nutrient base, and phytonutrients in vegetables cannot be properly absorbed without fat.”

Fallon Morell cites recent studies from Europe showing that lowfat diets promote weight gain in both children and adults, and also contribute to infertility. A meta-analysis published January, 2010 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found no significant evidence that saturated fat consumption is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

“Whole Foods CEO John Mackay has stated that eating animal fats amounts to an addiction. But in fact, animal fats are essential for good health,” says Fallon Morell. “The nutrients in animal fats, such as vitamins A, D and K, arachidonic acid, DHA, choline, cholesterol and saturated fat, are critical for brain function. In the misguided war against cholesterol and saturated fat, we have created an epidemic of learning disorders in the young and mental decline in the elderly.”

“Perhaps the vegetarian diet has affected the thinking powers of Whole Foods management,” says Fallon Morell. “It’s time for the stockholders to insist on leadership devoted to increasing customer base, not promoting a personal vegetarian agenda.”

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501C3 nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of the book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for over 12,000 members, supports 400 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly conference. The Foundation headquarters phone number is (202) 363-4394, westonaprice.org, info@westonaprice.org.

Comments about the Whole Foods Health Starts Here scheme can be emailed to customer.questions@wholefoods.com .

CONTACT

Kimberly Hartke, Publicist, the Weston A. Price Foundation

703-860-2711, 703-675-5557 press@westonaprice.org