A group of UCLA medical students and activists from Single Payer Action on Friday urged shoppers at a Whole Foods in Los Angeles to boycott the store.

Carrying signs saying “Don’t Shop While Americans Drop,” “CEO Mackey is Wacky,” and “Full Care for All,” the students said they were boycotting Whole Foods in response to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that there should be no American right to health care.

“Every industrialized country in the Western world — except the USA — recognizes a basic right to health care,” said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. “In the USA, sixty Americans die every day from lack of health insurance, according to the Institute of Medicine. In the rest of the West, that number is zero. That’s why millions of Americans, including many Whole Foods customers and workers across the country were offended by CEO Mackey’s social Darwinism.”

Among the UCLA medical students protesting at the Westwood Whole Foods, were Adam Saby — who organized the event — Lynne Chang, Jeffrey Dela Cruz, Angelico — who didn’t want his last name used — and Devan Jaganath.

Saby said he received a message the day before the protest on his voice mail from a manager at the Whole Foods expressing concern about the “safety of our customers.”

“He also wanted to talk through the issues,” Saby said. “I called him back but couldn’t reach him.”

“It seems like the people that we interacted with, and even some of the people that were passing by on the street, were aware of the comments that were made by the Whole Foods CEO the other week,” Dela Cruz told Single Payer Action. “This made me happy, knowing that people are still talking about this issue. It is okay to have your own opinion, but when a person in a position of great power makes an opinion regarding health care, knowing that our health care system is not where it should be in terms of access, quality, and cost, it’s important for other people — including medical students — to express their beliefs and opinions regarding the issue.”

“I wanted to show people that I care to see universal health care reform through a single-payer system, and that productive debates need to continue to happen all across the board in order for universal-health care advocates to achieve their goal,” Dela Cruz said.

Chang said that Mackey’s Wall Street Journal article “provided the perfect platform to engage with Whole Foods customers and passersby about why we disagree with the idea that ‘voluntary market exchanges’ will provide relief for our skyrocketing medical costs and disparity in care.”

“I am proud that we seized this opportunity to have dialogue with the community about the importance of taking on health care as a responsibility, a need, and a right,” Chang said. “The current state of free market insurance has proven untenable, lives and productivity are lost daily because of inability to pay for and access health care and that the time is now for Americans to make our government accountable for the health and productivity of its citizens.”

In his editorial, Mackey asserted that a right to health care has never existed in America.

“It is important to me to use opportunities like the Whole Foods protest to talk to people about this,” Change said, “to prompt people to probe and examine whether we as Americans, aware of the flaws and inequality of our current healthcare and insurance system, can continue to function with this mindset and not strive for something better — for ourselves and our country.”

(To see complete set of photos by Myla Reson, click here.)