A sugar tax

One issue that has not been widely raised in the healthcare debate is lifestyle.  I haven’t seen anything specific, but I can’t help believing that our nation’s lack of exercise and calorie-intensive eating habits are a, if not the, primary contributor to our exorbitant health care expenditures.  (Apparently, it’s not malpractice which is driving our health care costs.)   Obesity, and even just being overweight, has a lot of costly side effects.  Part of the problem is that we have trade barriers against sugar and subsidies for corn, so we get a lot of high fructose corn syrup in a lot of our food.  High fructose corn syrup is horrible for you.

A solution might be to make “unhealthy” food more expensive; “unhealthy” being pretty hard to define, targeting food with lots of sugar or high fructose corn syrup has a lot of the same effect.  Incidentally, the New York Times just ran an article about the (lack of) debate about a sugar tax.  According to the article, a tax of a penny an ounce – so $.12 for a can of Coke or $1.44 for a 12 pack – would raise $14.9 billion a year.  Diet drinks would avoid the tax, but a lot of teas would fall under it.

Naturally, the beverage industry strongly opposes this idea.  IT’LL COST AMERICAN JOBS!  Not surprisingly, the industry has created an astroturf organization called Americans Against Food Taxes.  From the About Us page: “Americans Against Food Taxes is a coalition of concerned citizens – responsible individuals, financially strapped families, small and large businesses in communities across the country – opposed to the Government’s proposed tax hike on food and beverages, including soda, juice drinks, and flavored milks.”  According to the same page, these concerned citizens include 7-Eleven, the American Beverage Association, Burger King, Delta, &c.  (I don’t call those “people,” but that might change soon if the Supreme Court gets crazy.)

Fortunately for the beverage industry, there’s an institution called the Senate.  It doesn’t like change, so there probably won’t be a sugar tax, according to the article.  As a guiding principle, however, most measures that are opposed by major corporations and the Senate are probably meritorious.