Of Flat Tax, Fat Tax, and 'Fat Cats': How Should We Fund Health Care?

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Of Flat Tax, Fat Tax,
and 'Fat Cats'
A health care reform surtax on the rich would make eminent federal budget sense — and, over the long haul, even more sense for our actual health.

August 10, 2009

By Sam Pizzigati


Politicians and policy makers who adore the rich don’t adore the progressive income tax. They’re always looking for alternatives. Conservative fans of fortune, over recent years, have been gravitating to the “flat tax,” the notion that everybody ought to pay income taxes at the same exact rate, an act of “fairness” that would mean an instant — and whopping — windfall for America’s most financially favored.

The more moderate of fortune's friends have, of late, been talking up the idea of a “fat tax.” Instead of taxing the rich to pay for health care reform, via a progressive surtax on high incomes, these moderates want to tax the sugary foods and drinks that make people fat.

This “fat tax,” at the moment, hasn’t yet gained much legislative momentum. But the working assumption behind the fat tax — that America’s expenditures for health care wouldn’t be so horribly out of control if people just worked harder at watching their weight — is rapidly hardening into our conventional political wisdom.

In the last few weeks alone, two major studies have linked overweight and obese people to rising health care costs. Treating overweight patients, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported late in July, adds as much as $147 billion annually to national health care spending.

Another new study, from the Urban Institute and the University of Virginia, puts the overall impact of obesity-related issues at closer to $200 billion a year. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/aug10a.html

[Lorax7844]

1. Excellent article! Good find, K&R

[zalinda]

2. They need to tax high fructose corn syrup

That crap is EVERYTHING. I bought a box of frozen brussel sprouts with butter sauce, as a treat. After cooking, I tasted SWEET brussel sprouts. WTF? They put high fructose corn syrup on brussel sprouts!!!!!!! You have to read EVERY label, and those ingredient listings can be awful small. Those of us who can't afford to get new glasses every other year, can barely read that small print.

zalinda

[Lorax7844]

3. kick

[bertman]

6. And the scary part is that you can't tell what's corny when you read the labels. So many

of the products, fillers, supplements, are corn by-products but go by their scientific names or trade names that you wouldn't recognize them.

HFCS is in almost everything we consume if it's processed.

Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, for more details. Excellent book.

[customerserviceguy]

4. One thing I've never seen in this analyzing of what large people "cost"

our society, is what they save the government in not collecting Social Security for an additional 15-20 years. Then, when they're at the end of some ripe old life, they have expensive healthcare costs anyway. Of course, during that 15-20 extra year period, they have some 'maintenance' healthcare costs that dead fat people don't incur, either.

I'm far more worried about lifestyle police than I would ever be about a so-called "death panel".

[rurallib]

5. I still say a tax on stock trades

about $.0001/share sold should generate some huge money.