Quote:
Originally Posted by A1337STI
Interesting some of the ways they are going to pay (partially pay?) for the new plan :
http://www.boston.com/business/perso...plication.html
Section 10907 of the Original Bill - Excise tax on indoor tanning services: This is a sales tax of ten percent assessed on your trip to the tanning salon. This tax begins July 1, 2010.
There's also a National sales tax in place on medical devices now.. How long before a national sales tax creeps it way onto other products ? |
I can only pray for national sales tax sooner rather than later.
http://www.fairtax.org/
And the idea of taxing vices is pretty straightforward and not akin to slavery in that stretch you attempted to make.
Take cigarettes for example. People that want to smoke are allowed to, even though it hurts their health. But because smokers end up costing *everyone* more due to the cost of healthcare, there's a tax on cigarettes to offset that. So, you're allowed to do what you want but if it affects others, you have to compensate them for it.
I'm assuming that because indoor tanning is more dangerous than the sun for getting skin cancer, they can justify a tax on it to offset the burden unnecessary cancer patients place on the healthcare system.
As far as agreeing with that justification... I'm not so sure I believe there's a demonstrateable relationship between tanning and the cost of healthcare. But for things like smoking (and diabetes, and heart disease, etc) there certainly is a quantifiable correlation. IMO, taxing cigarettes and corn syrup would be fine with me to offset the massive cost of keeping people that over-consume those items it alive. Once it's not such a big problem, then the tax should go away.
But of course, I'd much rather pay for it all with a flat tax instead, and use preventative healthcare to stop people from getting all those problems caused by smoking and corn syrup before they happen. After all, what's the point of collecting money to handle large numbers of sick people if we can prevent the sick people to begin with? The goal of healthcare first and foremost should be to keep people healthy... not to deal with them after they're sick.