unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system," he wrote. He continued: "Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health careto 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?" In an NPR interview in 2013, Mackey compared the Obama administration's healthcare law to "fascism" instead of socialism, stating, "[t]echnically speaking, it's more like fascism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control itand that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms." The day following the interview, Mackey wrote that he regretted having made the remark, stating that he "made a poor word choice to describe [the U.S.] healthcare system." Instead, he called it "government-controlled health care". Unions Mackey is known for his strong anti-union views, having once compared unions to herpes in that "it won't kill you, but it's very unpleasant and will make a lot of people not want to be your lover." Whole Foods Market, along with Costco and Starbucks, teamed up in 2008 to create an alternative to the Employee Free Choice Act. The three companies invited other corporations, unions and public interest groups to join them, proposing instead that unions be given more access to meet with workers, stricter penalties for labor violations and a guaranteed right to request secret ballots in all circumstances. Mackey commented in 2005: "It's illegal in the United States for there to be company unionsspecial unions which are formed and controlled by the employees and managers of the company to represent their interests and collectively bargain on their behalf. These type of unions are legal in many countries such as Japan, but are illegal in the United States. Instead the law requires that all unions be outside unions. I believe this law should be repealed and that company unions should be as legal as any other kind of voluntary association." Environment Mackey does not consider himself to be a skeptic of scientific opinion on climate change. Nevertheless, he rejects the scientific evidence for dangerous anthropogenic global warming, believing instead that "climate change is perfectly natural and