From Transparency to Opacity in Health-care
Soda Tax Weighed to Pay for Health-Care:
Hope and change!
Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system....
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog group that pressures food companies to make healthier products, plans to propose a federal excise tax on soda, certain fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. It would not include most diet beverages. Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.
Senior staff members for some Democratic senators at the center of the effort to craft health-care legislation are weighing the idea behind closed doors, [my emphasis] Senate aides said.
Hope and change!
Labels: health care
posted by Helen at 9:26 AM
22 Comments:
So, at this time, diet drinks are not to be included...smart! Get all the sanctimonious diet drinkers to go along with this law, and as we have already seen in this lifetime, it will not be long before they realize that diet drinks need to be taxed also.
We aren't really talking about programming healthy living...we're actually talking behavior modification, and unrestrained power.
Hmm, so is the goverment also going to crack down on all the various farmers who produce corn that is solely for High Fructose Corn Syrup users or at least stop subsidizing them?
Ah - more new taxes.
Bill
http://willstuff.wordpress.com
Obama hopes to take all your change.
Another step in the government controlling everything you eat, drink and breath.
Sio,
You're talking about the organization which destroyed excess crops during the only time when Americans had a credible chance of starving (the Great Depression) and that punishes private citizens for funding what it considers terrorism, but subsidizes any foreign group or government it wants including the Palestinian Authority which is just a front for Palestinian terrorists.
One decision the government will never make is to decrease spending, I don't care whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans in office. Governments will always grow and the constituency will rarely complain, because less government means less services.
Governments can only print extra money for so long before it starts to affect the economy or lenders get the idea the government will never pay back what it owes. Citizens will tolerate only so much income, property and sales tax, so the ever-expanding government has got to find a new way to obtain funds. Hence, the sin tax.
I was in a store recently with a friend who purchased a pack of Marlboro Lights for $7.43. I was impressed. I haven't bought an alcoholic beverage in years, do you have to get a second mortgage for a bottle of beer these days?
Now the tax vultures are circling around high fructose corn syrup. Sugar is a different animal than cigarettes and beer. When you thing of smokers and drinkers, you think of ashy gaunt people that prefer dark places. But sugar is enjoyed on donuts served after church services, in a cake at a birthday party for your innocent darling child, and in a teaspoon or two in the coffee cup of the local pillar-of-the-community.
Do we, as part of the law-abiding morally upright population, have the gonads to look in the mirror and consider ourselves sinners by admitting that our food choices are harming our bodies every time we pay a few cents extra for a sugared beverage? I doubt it.
Sugar tax? Never going to happen.
Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.How much excise or any other tax is passed on to buyers (in this case, consumers) depends on the price elasticity of demand for the good or service; the lower the price elasticity of demand, the higher the percentage of tax that will be paid by the buyer. I learned that in my first microeconomics class, which evidently isn't required to get a degree in journalism.
And, just once, I wish that a "public interest" organization would advocate something that I think is in my interest, instead of the interests of the people who know what's best for me.
So have you ever seen the size of some of these representatives and Senators? Maybe if they set the example and tried a diet and exercise program of their own - of course discipline is the last thing on their minds.
of course you will find this and that to carp about. Begin by noting that soda is a bit addictive and very young kids drink it with their very young minds, not fully developed, but enveloped with sugar. I am not saying it ought to be taxed but rather focusing upon certain items. You have had booze drinks for how long? How much have you paid in taxes for this pleasure? Idea: legalize pot and tax the hell out of it...get the hippies to support us!! unless you too want to smoke it. In which case it becomnes govt inteference.
Thor's Dad:
Um, I don't think one of my Senators can partake in an exercise program. She's too fat to stand up anymore.
Cham - maybe she can use Medicare (or is it Medicaid) to purchase a Scooter - from the Scooter store. Our tax dollars hard at work.
And Fred what about parents helping kids with food choices? What about all of the "government education" to help them know how to do this? What about a degee of personal responsibility? I stopped drinking soda - didn't need a tax or a law - it wasn't really all that difficult.
fred, I have no idea what you are referring to about soda being addictive. Then you go and confuse me by saying something completely reasonable about legalizaing marijuana.
While I am confused as to the former, we agree on the latter.
Trey
This comment has been removed by the author.
As has been appropriate since the Clinton Administration, a song quote:
"Ill tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around...
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We dont get fooled again"
Extra points for whoever fills in the very end of the song.
First they taxed the smokers but I didn't complain because I wasn't a smoker.
Then they taxed the alcoholic beverage drinkers but I didn't complain because I seldom drink alcoholic beverages.
Soon they'll tax the sugared soda drinkers but why should I complain because I don't drink them.
Sooner or later, they'll come to increase taxes on the rest of us and no one will give a damn because we didn't stick up for them.
I don't really see the soda tax or the various cap and trade schemes as anythig other than taxes. It is not about healthcare or the environment, it is about revenue.
Now the government is finding ways to tax water and the air respectively.
Trey
So, are they going to look at a tax on fruit next? Bananas/grapes/tangerines, all are high sugar content.
This is just another way of taking money from people who have little.
Fred, why is it that the dems continually want to put taxes in place that will effect the people they champion - the poor. This type of tax will hit them harder than anyone else.
I do agree with you on the legalized and tax pot. Our war on drugs has been just as effective as prohibition was.
So, at this time, diet drinks are not to be included...smart! Get all the sanctimonious diet drinkers to go along with this law
Gunnypink, I'm diabetic, so if I want to have a soda, I don't have a chioce, I MUST drink a diet. You might consider that not all people who drink diet feel everyone should. You are correct however, about unrestrained power. Welcome to the Nanny State.
What offends me, is that the same people who have bankupt Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have the unmitigated audacity to say that they should now be allowed to "manage" the nation's private health care system.
What next?
Trey
TMink,
What next?
How about the car industry....ooops, already there.
How about the banking industry.....once again.....
How about wall street.....
Helmet/seatbelt laws.....
Death.....they even tax you when you die....
I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out, but I think the easier question would be....
What don't they try to "manage", at this point?
A pox on all nanny-statists.
Cham, I hate to pop your balloon, but you're already paying taxes on anything with sugar.
American sugar producers have made damn sure for several decades that foreign sugar was subject to high tariffs. Who pays the difference? You do.
Ok, not technically a tax, but I'm sure that will make your pocketbook feel much better... :)
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