Well that was fast! Despite all the lofty campaign rhetoric, I knew it would only be a matter of time until all would-be health care funding mechanisms that were progressive, universal, or semi-sensible would be discarded as unacceptable, and replaced with the lowest-denominator gimmickry of "sin taxes". But the Flash Gordon speed at which we got to this point even surprised me!
Anybody familiar with my diary history knows I'm a ferocious critic of the pseudopuritanical "sin tax". They're hypocritical. They're predatory. They're regressive to the point of being reverse redistribution of income. They're financially self-defeating, yielding diminishing returns over time. And most unacceptably of all, they are almost always dishonest. Never in the history of "sin taxes" has there been one that's ethically justified. They're the purest form of evil that exists in public tax policy.
Several years ago, when it became obvious that cowardly elected officials of both parties in every branch of government intended to mortgage the nation's financial future with layer upon layer upon layer of path-of-least-resistance sin taxes, I made a deal with myself. Never would I lend comfort to their unconscionable cynicism by playing along with the sin tax pyramid scheme. Never would I lend comfort...or a red cent. Thus far, I've honored my bargain with myself. I've never bought a pack of cigarettes. I've never bought an alcoholic beverage. I've never put a quarter in Big Brother's gambling casinos.
Suddenly, however, I'm at a crossroads. Now that we're moving ever-closer to ruling out sane funding mechanisms to pay for a national health care program, we're moving towards manufacturing a brand new "sin" on the ever-expanding rolodex of naughty proletariat consumer choices that needs to be singled out for punitive taxes if the republic is to survive. The new breed of American sinner in need of an "offer they can't refuse".....the soda drinker!
Oh damn! That's me! I drink Pepsi....so therefore I should pay disproportionately for some frat boy's alcohol poisoning treatment! Never mind the fact that I haven't had the flu in 13 years and haven't even had a serious head cold since 2003, Max Baucus says I'm responsible for driving up health care costs in America.....so it must be so!
As I said above, "sin taxes" are dishonest. Most proponents will tell us, either out of ignorance or outright hucksterism, that a tax on soda is a "user fee"...that those who drink soda become obese and drive up health care costs for everyone. The inconvenient truth is that Point A doesn't connect to Point B, and actuarial studies with any interest in the truth rather than creating a pretext to increase sin taxes further tell us the inverse is true.....that the obese run up 11% lower lifetime health care costs than healthy-weight nonsmokers. http://www.omaha.com/...
Now I'm more than willing to pay just about any extra tax to expand health care coverage in America. A half-cent national sales tax wouldn't be the best solution, but I'd swallow. Taxes on health care benefits as McCain proposed would be loosely acceptable. A general payroll tax, progressively applied and singled out specifically for health care, would probably be the most efficient funding mechanism of all, and I'd be happy to pay my share. In theory, it would be very hard for elected officials to find a funding mechanism for the needed expansion of health care in America that I would balk at, but they've managed to pull it off.
So what do I do? It's hard to see me giving up my Pepsi and 7UP consumption, but I would be incredibly remiss if I went down without a fight. Depending on how high the tax is, and rest assured that even if it doesn't start out that high it will get that way VERY soon as all "sin taxes" do, black markets and other alternatives will emerge. Before I'd financially reward the snake-oil peddlers in Congress for their intellectual dishonesty, I would pay more to buy untaxed Pepsi to be shipped in from Canada, Mexico, or Equitorial Guinea for that matter. Before I would lend financial comfort to lawmaking sin tax predators and give them an excuse to unjustifiably empty the wallets of disproportionately low-income consumers with even further sin taxes, I would buy my 12-packs off the back of a Mack truck, even if it had "Death to America" and "Hezbollah Power" bumper stickers on the back.
But as I said in the title, there is one premise in which I could support a "soda tax" as a primary funding mechanism for national health care, and that would be if the sinners paying the sin tax always get bumped to the front of the line for any and all medical treatments. I don't care if the ER doctor is in the middle of open heart surgery on a non-sin-tax-paying coffee, tea, or flavored water drinker, said ER doctor better drop everything on the spot for myself or any other Pepsi drinker that walks in there with a hangnail.