I saw a clip on CNN this morning about the possibility of a special tax on fattening, non-nourishing foods and found the idea intriguing. We tax cigarettes and alcohol, I thought, maybe there is something to be said about taxing other harmful products to 1) discourage their use, and 2) use the funds for health care or whatever.
Yeah, this–like many taxes–disproportionately affects the poor, but…they also have disproportionately more problems with obesity because of buying cheap non-nutritional food.
Am I just being my usual “tax happy” self? Bah: I get a kick out of the One-Issue Republicans chanting “Lower Taxes” out of their own basic human greed (”More money in my pocket!”), while supporting policies that take many more multiples of that money out of their eventual pockets. For example, it is said that the Iraq War will end up costing us $1 trillion when you take into account the future medical expenses for our wounded troops. Divide this by the 300 million people in our country and we’re all going to pay an extra and unnecessary $3000+ just for that war–which will eventually have to be paid for during the Obama/Biden, Palin/Limbaugh, and Jenna Bush/Blanket Jackson administrations. (Never mind that pretty much all of us lost more of our net worth that last year of the Bush Administration than we had paid in taxes during his eight-year reign…)
From the FREAKONOMICS BLOG:
From a Wall Street Journal article by Betsy McKay come these tantalizing facts (emphasis added):
The medical costs of treating obesity-related diseases may have soared as high as $147 billion in 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday, as its new director set a fresh tone in favor of more aggressively attacking obesity.
The cost of treating obesity doubled over a decade, signaling the rising prevalence of excess weight and the toll it is taking on the health-care system. The medical costs of obesity were estimated to be $74 billion in 1998, according to a study by federal government researchers and RTI International, a nonprofit research institute in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
The findings were released at a conference on obesity held by the CDC in Washington, D.C. The prevalence of obesity rose 37 percent between 1998 and 2006, and medical costs climbed to about 9.1 percent of all U.S. medical costs, the researchers said.
Obese people spent 42 percent more than people of normal weight on medical costs in 2006, a difference of $1,429, the study found. Prescription drugs accounted for much of the increase.
We’ve blogged here variously in the past about the many possible contributing factors that have made it so much easier to get obese these days. That said, it is a self-inflicted condition any way you look at it….[Rest of article]
