If you’re trying to figure out whether reform of America’s busted healthcare system is finally, really, truly going to happen this year, this fantastic piece by Matt Bai in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine is required reading.
It looks at how President Obama—between trying to achieve Middle East peace and save our floundering economy—is planning to move major healthcare reform through the labyrinth of self-interest, lingering grudges, and lobbyist influence that is Congress. It’s a goal, Bai notes, “that has eluded every Democratic president since Harry Truman.”
More on that later, but here’s one fascinating item. While no one agrees on where, exactly, Congress is going to get the money to pay for a shiny new American healthcare system, one idea is to tax your favorite sugar-bomb soda. Or, as Bai put it:
Slap new taxes on some of the products that cause health problems in the first place, like soft drinks.
Of course, he notes, “industry lobbyists are already spending satchels of cash to head that off.” But while they fight that one out, it seems worth considering what other delicious personal-health timebombs the government might want to tax, and what proven cures it might want to subsidize, in order to make healthcare reform more affordable:
What’s universal healthcare worth to you?
Photo via Creative Commons and Flickr user woody1778a.
This is actually a great idea.
Soda does absolutely no good to anyone,
causes tooth decay and diabetes and obesity and bone density problems…
Tax it like tobacco and alcohol-
either reduce consumption and/or rack up some revenue for health care.
Tax the alkies.
It’s not like they’d notice, and they use up more than their fair share of resources at emergency rooms after the bar fights.
No tax on diet soda, right?
Also, they might as well tax stuff like energy drinks and all those other specialty drinks since most of them have lots of sugar.
Shit, why not just make a huge list of everything that anyone thinks is 1) unnecessary and 2) could be unhealthy and we’ll only tax those things.
Yeah, great idea.
And of course, a tax on soda, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. disproportionately affects the middle and lower classes, since they use them more.
@4
Yes, butts, chew, soda, potato chips energy drinks tax it all why the fuck should those of us who eat healthy pay for the health care of those who don’t??????????
Plus: by making people more healthy, um, it lowers the cost of health care.
Let’s fucking tax cigarettes $10 a pack and put a $1 deposit on the butts, too.
A tax on blog comments?
A lot of people don’t have anything worth saying, but they say it anyway.
Most sodas don’t have sugar anymore, they have high fructose corn syrup. People have been drinking sugar for hundreds of years, but obesity has become an epidemic in the US since the introduction of HFCS, which is subsidized by the government and protected with a tariff on sugar.
Seriously? Acai berries? Has that ridiculous bullshit penetrated the popular consciousness that far?
How about a 100% tax on quack medicine like homeopathy and unregulated “supplements”? It’ll starve the quacks out of business and the would-be victims of fraud medicine won’t get any diminished benefit, seeing as they weren’t going to get any in the first place.
what a dumb poll
Congressional head fake. Slimy way to get lobbyists to send more cash. No new tax on the way, kids.
weird poll. the list is supposed to be a bunch of wildly popular cherished vices that we would all be loathe to give up? i don’t partake in a single one of them.
would love to vote, but don’t feel qualified!
5
they also use publicly funded health care more.
I say tax the shit out of lobbying.
Tax the source – sugar, high-fructose corn-syrup, trans fats, etc.
Seriously. I don’t really think taxing soda is a good idea, but if you really want to do it right, you should tax the ingredient that causes the problem.
Otherwise, why not tax candy bars, ice cream, etc.? Seems very ad-hoc to tax one end product and not others.
Tax unhealthy ingredients. The more sugar something has, the more expensive it is. Good for society. 🙂
Of course, it ends up being regressive because the people who are educated enough to know the difference and have access to lots of markets with healthy options in them are the ones that make a lot more money anyway and can pay the extra taxes.
But whatever…
@8 Maybe if we just stop subsidizing corn so much (and really all major ag-business), we could save some money and make it harder to make all that junk food. If the government wants us to be healthier, they’d support small farms that grow diverse products. That’s better for the environment and the economy.
Messing with the corn and soy industry would be pretty difficult and scary task.
How do I select all of the above?
Such bullshit! “Sin” taxes are mama government trying to get people to REDUCE a behavior by making it more expensive. It is completely stupid to fund a necessary service through a means that is specifically intended to reduce the tax base for that service.
Sorry kids, everybody needs health care and for it to work we are all going to have to pay for it.
@6,
First part’s a good idea, as long as the shitty food tax raises the price so it’s equal to healthy food. Healthy food’s too damn expensive, it’s no surprise the poor aren’t buying it.
Your second part, actually, I read recently that making people healthier actually increases health care costs because then people live longer
@18, you beat me to it. Need check boxes instead of radio buttons on that poll. Plus “Other________”.
@16 for the insightful corn-subsidy-avoiding win.
@8:
High fructose corn syrup is sugar. It has fructose right in the name! Yes, it is a different form of sugar than table sugar but it’s still sugar.
@17 Messing with any endangered outdated monolithic power structure can be difficult and scary. It’s like dealing with a injured and cornered animal that somehow ended up in your house overnight. Yep. Scary and difficult.
But that doesn’t mean you just leave it there and go to work. You get rid of the thing before it eats your cat, claws up your couch and destroys everything you care about. If it’s too big for you alone, you call in some help. But one must deal with it!
@24 That might be the best analogy I’ve heard to compete with the stupid David and Goliath one. I think I’m gonna start using that to explain my position over health care, lobby reform, our broken education system… it works for them all!
19
70% of our healthcare spending is to treat easily preventable lifestyle induced disease.
70% of that is public spending.
If people are willing and able to pay for their own healthcare they can eat themselves to death.
If the government is going to pick up the tab tax the slobs.