Legal Commentary

A "Drink Tax" for Health Care?

By Jeralyn

No one cared about the "sin tax" on cigarette smokers. Will they care about a proposed tax on alcohol and sugary soda? Probably.

Besides alcohol, drinks with sugar, high fructose corn syrup and similar sweeteners would be targeted, though diet drinks with artificial sweeteners would not. Other industries also are on alert, worried that the idea of "lifestyle taxes" could spread to other products deemed unhealthy.

"Are they going to hit couch manufacturers? School districts that have canceled physical education?" joked Neil Trautwein, health care lobbyist for the National Retail Federation, which opposes the plan and whose members include fast-food restaurants.

[More...]

Put more bluntly,

"Before you tax Joe Six-Pack on his beer and Joe Junior on his soda pop at the Little League game, people are going to say, 'Can't you go out and find some savings from'" the health care system, said one committee member, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Where do legislators get these bad ideas from?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).