Obama Wants To Tax Fattening Foods

Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare
Los Angeles Times
When historians look back to identify the pivotal moments in the nation’s struggle against obesity, they might point to the current period as the moment when those who influenced opinion and made public policy decided it was time to take the gloves off.
As evidence of this new “get-tough” strategy on obesity, they may well cite a study released today by the Urban Institute titled “Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies From the Tobacco Wars.”
In the debate over healthcare reform, the added cost of caring for patients with obesity-related diseases has become a common refrain: most recent is the cost-of-obesity study, also released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It finds that as obesity rates increased from 18.3% of Americans in 1998 to 25% in 2006, the cost of providing treatment for those patients’ weight-driven problems increased healthcare spending by $40 billion a year.
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“Facing the serious consequences of an uncontrolled obesity epidemic, America’s state and federal policy makers may need to consider interventions every bit as forceful as those that succeeded in cutting adult tobacco use by more than 50%,” the Urban Institute report says. It took awhile — almost 50 years from the first surgeon general’s report on tobacco in 1964 — to drive smoking down. But in many ways, the drumbeat of scientific evidence and the growing cultural stigma against obesity already are well underway — as any parent who has tried to bring birthday cupcakes into her child’s classroom certainly knows.
Key among the “interventions” the report weighs is that of imposing an excise or sales tax on fattening foods. That, says the report, could be expected to lower consumption of those foods. But it would also generate revenues that could be used to extend health insurance coverage to the uninsured and under-insured, and perhaps to fund campaigns intended to make healthy foods more widely available to, say, low-income Americans and to encourage exercise and healthy eating habits.
If anti-tobacco campaigns are to be the model, those sales taxes could be hefty: The World Health Organization has recommended that tobacco taxes should represent between two-thirds and three-quarters of the cost of, say, a package of cigarettes; a 2004 report prepared for the Department of Agriculture suggested that, for “sinful-food” taxes to change the way people eat, they may need to equal at least 10% to 30% of the cost of the food.
And although 40 U.S. states now impose modest extra sales taxes on soft drinks and a few snack items, the Urban Institute report suggests that a truly forceful “intervention” — one that would drive down the consumption of fattening foods and, presumably, prevent or reverse obesity — would have to target pretty much all the fattening and nutritionally empty stuff we eat: “With a more narrowly targeted tax, consumers could simply substitute one fattening food or beverage for another,” the reports says.
Of course, the United States also would have to adopt extensive menu- and food-labeling changes that would make “good foods” easily distinguishable from the bad ones subject to added taxes. Not to worry though: Several European countries, most notably Great Britain, have led the way in this area.

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Wild Thing’s comment………
OK I hope I can make sense with what I am thinking.
First of all anyone that is overweight should be allowed to make the decision on their own to want to get in shape. And there are plenty of extremely thin people that are not in shape either. Too thin or too fat, both are at risk at not being as healthy as they should be or could be. But it needs to be up to each individual and not coming from any government. That is BS.
OK now about extra taxing funk food. NO way, please don’t do that. Computer food is necessary. LOL And how the heck are we to survive Obama without some junk food along the way, that ever lovin feel good food and soft drinks.
Nicholas and his diet cokes and for me I am a frappuccino addict. Both of those would be on Obama’s list to tax.
The Democrats are being super-stupid as usual. Many foods can be fattening if you eat enough of them.Where do you draw the line between fattening foods and healthy foods?
You can get fat on health food. Heck I can go to a Sweet Tomatoes and load up a salad that would be just as fattening as a hot fudge sundae.
Plus not everybody that eats Twinkies, Big-Macs, pizza, or any other high calorie food is fat. That means that the 147 pound guy is being charged for the health care of a 300 pound guy.
How does Nadler, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy and some others feel about this. What is good for the goose kind of thing. Can I use the word goose with Barney Franks name? hahaha
Obama does not give a rat’s patootie about citizens. It’s all about power and gaining more power over every facet of one’s life.
Here is some liberal thinking……..tax the overweight but hand out needles to junkies for free. sheessh that is how these idiots think.
I am 5’11 and have modeled with my weight being between 130 and 150. At 130 I look like a skelton and 160 is a healthier weight. Most of the magazine covers I did I weighed 160 hahaha that would be obese to Obama I bet.
Twenty years ago when I was body building there was this really nice guy at the Gold’s gym that wanted more then anything to be a firemen. He had been a body builder for 5 years, competing etc. He took all his firemen tests and passed with flying colors. BUT when it came to the weight part of the exam he failed. This was in Venice, Calif. just down the road from Malibu. He failed because his weight did not match the weight chart for his height. He was 5’5 and even though he had extremely low body fat count he was considered way over weight. I asked him, didn’t they see you in person to know the chart meant nothing and you are in great shape. He said it did not matter, that yes they saw him and told him he had to get his weight down 25 pounds. He did it but he really had to work his butt of to do it. It is not only hard to put muscle on but also hard to take it off.
If Obama goes by weight charts there are also going to be a lot of in shape people that will show up as over weight just like the firemen did. There is that too.
There are no real incentives with Obama, he is a downer all the way. If they do this tax on junk food, then why not say, if a person gets healthy or gains or looses weight to get in shape then give them the incentive to NOT have to pay the tax once they get in shape. Like a goal. There would still be people that would just rather pay the tax and not care so then Obama and Pelosi etc. would still get their hands on money that they worship. that they do not earn.

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…..Thank you Richard for sending this to me.