Health Taxes
January 3, 2007
Happy 2007!
The Christmas break is well and truly over, as demonstrated by my inbox being jammed full of e-mails on the Green Party lists, my legs constantly aching from standing for too long on the wards and my blood pressure rocketing… (I have a lovely essay to do).
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A topic which has recently caught my attention, is that of taxes on ‘unhealthy’ substances, such as sugar and fat. It is an interesting idea, not least because it sounds strikingly authoritarian to dictate to people what they can and cannot eat. Should the ‘health apparatus’ be informing people or compelling people?
An argument I have seen posited is that such taxes are the only alternative to rationing healthcare by not treating the obese. Wouldn’t the end outcome of such taxes simple be that the well-off would keep their autonomy and the poorer in society would loose that autonomy since they would not be able to afford it? Hardly fair for an NHS which is funded through general taxation… Is the NHS not there to treat people regardless of their health ’sins’? What next? Perhaps we should tax people who take part in dangerous sports in order to fund their treatment and to discourage such hazardous activities. It reminds me of a quote in the front of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine: The aim of medicine is surely not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The true physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution. (H. L. Mencken, 1923)
Hmm, I wonder. It is an interesting idea…
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1.
oneoffmanmental | January 4, 2007 at 4:22 am
Quite. When you first sent me those suggestions, I thought I had suddenly become a raging libertarian. Nanny-state doesn’t even begin to describe the idea.
2. Random Variable» Bl&hellip | January 5, 2007 at 1:12 am
[...] Studentmedic writes about a proposal for taxing high-fat/sugar containing foods due to the overwhelming costs to the NHS to treat obesity. The original proposal also suggested taxing labour-saving devices, so that people got more exercise. My knee-jerk reaction was quite libertarian in nature. But after some more time and some very crude mathematics, here are my latest thoughts: [...]
3.
Peter | January 5, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I’m of the firm opinion that obesity is not caused by a poor diet. I know plenty of people who eat huge quantities of bad, fatty food – but because their lifestyle involves plenty of exercise, it does not matter.
It’s very simple – if you consume more calories than you burn off, you put on weight. If you burn off more calories than you consume, you lose weight.
So a “fat and sugar tax” would, in a sense, be a tax on those who need to eat a lot to fuel an active job or lifestyle.
My view is – let people decide how much food and exercise they want in their life. I would pay for the health costs of obesity by charging the obese for it directly.
4.
studentmedic | January 5, 2007 at 8:44 pm
You do that and you will disproportionately be charging the poor in society. That is really regressive – we want to be narrowing rather than widening the inequality gap.
What about people who find it difficult to exercise due to physical difficulties? What about those who have genetic abnormalities making them have a reduced metabolic rate? What about people who have been bullied so badly about their bodies that to do any kind of sport makes them far too self conscious?
There are hundreds of social reasons why people don’t exercise… Taxes on sugar and charging the obese are really little sticking plasters that don’t solve the overall problem.
I’d also add that all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that diet is a massive component (although, yes, exercise is also important of course). You are using your anecdotal evidence in place of more scientifically valid studies…
How would you go about charging the obese? Insist everyone goes to their GP annually to be measured up? Refuse treatment until they pay for it (out goes free at the point of use…). Besides, how many obese people are happy with being so? Do you think that when the majority are already trying to loose weight (for aesthetic and health reasons) that a tax or charging will change that???
In the end, we could alienate a huge section of society here if we’re not careful. I think all the measures I have seen suggested are at danger of classifying obesity as a ‘deadly sin’. Are we going to be so nannying that we can’t allow people to make their own decisions. Next we’ll be charging the promiscuous for treating their STDs…or a tax on having sex itself (I am sure we could work out a way of knowing if we put our minds to it…)
Efforts should be aimed at nutrition and fitness education at a young age and regulations against advertising junk food.
studentmedic