Health Care Reform

Though I'm skeptical of the "Natural News" because this Mike Adams guy can be reactionary, and he has at times pushed out erroneous or heavily biased information; this is an article where he's discussing a position on politics and he makes a couple of very good points... despite his painful and lame attempts at humor. 

The problem being considered his how to fund healthcare in the U.S.:
"The debate over health care reform has run smack into a brick wall of economic reality. There's just not enough money to pay for all the disease in America, it seems, and now lawmakers are desperately searching for new sources that might bridge the financial gaps. Their latest scheme involves taxing sodas with a three-cent tax to raise an extra $24 billion over the next four years."

The rationale for taxing soda:
"At first, taxing soda might seem like a good idea. Sodas, after all, promote diabetes, obesity, bone loss and many other costly health conditions. It only stands to reason that people who drink soda should pay a little more towards a national health care plan."

The point Mike makes that I think we should consider:
"But there are problems with this idea of a soda tax. For starters, it's a highly regressive tax that ultimately gets paid mostly by low-income, low-education people (the kind of people who drink a lot of soda). It's a tax, in other words, on those who can least afford it."

What he proposes:
"...if the U.S. government is going to use taxes to modify consumer behavior, it would seem prudent to first end the government subsidies on sugar that have existed since World War II. Why are we still using taxpayer dollars to lower the price of sugar when refined white sugar contributes so much to our nation's health problems?"

And this made me realize that this idea of taxing soda is just another way for corporations to shift the risk and ultimate cost of selling a product that makes the end consumer unhealthy.  We pay for it first with our tax dollars in subsidies, and this tax is a double-whammy proposal to tax it upon sale as well... then we also pay for it in our healthcare cost when this crap makes us unhealthy.

"Slapping new "sin taxes" on consumer products as a way to shape consumer behavior while raising money is a seductively attractive idea if you're a bureaucrat with an itchy trigger finger. It seems (at first, at least) economically and morally sound: Make the people who cause the problem pay more for fixing it. It all seems so simple: Let cigarette taxes pay for health care. Let soda taxes help fight obesity. Let alcohol taxes pay for alcohol addiction recovery centers. But in the real world, it never quite works that way: Money gets stolen away for other uses, rarely going to the intended beneficiary. Meanwhile, the taxes end up hurting those consumers who can least afford it."

There are many choices being made in this consumption chain.  While it's true the consumer bears the ultimate responsibility for their own choices, and they should educate themselves about the things they consume.  The industry that promotes these products should take responsibility for the knowledge that they have.

There's a socio-economic gap in America.  There is a reason that the poorest people in our nation drink soda instead of orange juice.  In some homes the difference between $1 and $3 is a whole lot of money when considering your grocery bill.  

Now, I don't propose that we should have a law against sugar, but if sugar becomes more costly to use because the government stops subsidizing it - corporations will find other alternatives, perhaps healthier alternatives.  Consumers won't be able to afford it and perhaps they'll find healthier alternatives.  Remove the artificial market so that we're not shifting the costs of the production and consumption of sugar on down the line.  Corporations would have to pay the true cost of what they're marketing. 

This editorial advocates changing the way we pay for health-care from fee for service to a kind of global payment system (for example, 9 months of obstetric care might be a single payment regardless of how many procedures an individual patient might require).  What do people think of this idea?