In August 2009, Mackey wrote the editorial in the "Wall Street Journal" expressing his viewpoints on universal healthcare in the United States. "While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new 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?"