By his own words, fixing our health care system has been one of the most important goals President Barack Obama has targeted since he announced his run for the presidency.
And in this week's address to the nation, the president provided a few more details to his outline to reform health care for Americans without adding to the federal deficit.
Obama claims that it will cost $635 billion as a down payment to fund the reform plan. He says $300 billion will come from savings generated by reducing Medicare overpayments to private insurers and eliminating waste in Medicare and Medicaid.
The problem with those figures is that they are in dispute. Depending on which Washington D.C. think-tank you listen to, the amount of savings to be derived from the trimming of fraud and waste varies wildly.
There is no doubt that new and creative ways are needed to fund health care reform.
I have a suggestion that came into clear focus last week by the sights I took in walking through the downtown restaurant complex in Silver Spring, Md. about 10 miles from the nation's capitol. There, hundreds of people mingled while kids played in an outdoor fountain. And obesity reigned.
It seemed like at least every other people walking about was not just a tad overweight but HUGE. Young kids, teens, adults, black, white, Hispanic, men, women - many of them looking like they were the winners of pie-eating contests.
Silver Spring isn't alone. Just check the figures on widespread obesity in America.
My idea isn't new, but I think it has some merit. Why not put a special tax on unhealthful foods that do nothing but add inches to waistlines and contribute to the rising costs we all have to pay for health care?
There will be some snags in creating such a tax. For instance, would a Big Mac sandwich qualify for the tax? Some supporters would argue that such sandwiches do include items from the basic food groups and should be exempt. Others would point to the high amounts of fat and sodium as the reason they should be taxed.
All I know is if we are going to get serious about fixing health care, we need new funding streams to make it happen. Let the fat cats pay for it, because obesity costs us all.
Comments: (262)
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By: BillWatson on 6/14/2009 9:31PM
Hundreds of billions of dollars of annual savings could be realized for Americans, while eliminating debilitating financial burdens for individuals and businesses by using these health care reforms. This would also be the best economic stimulus package ever. Ask OMB.
1. Set up a civilian, VA style, public health care system for delivering all government funded health care and medications free to everyone choosing to use it, no restrictions, rich, and poor, Medicare, Medicaid, etc everybody who wants public care has it free, all services, all medications, free period.
2. Pay for it with a national sales tax.
3. Let private insurers and care providers compete for everyone who wants private care, unfettered by government mandates, dictating who must be served, at what level, for what price, and totally unregulated but for safety.
4. Businesses that choose public care for their employees will have no financial obligations or any other responsibilities concerning health care.
5. Dispensing health care efficiently, and collecting the money to pay for it cheaply, that's the purpose of the exercise, and no one can compete with the government at these two tasks.
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By: Sue on 6/16/2009 7:27AM
You dont really understand how the system works do you...and you obviously have NO idea about how the government runs things. Government run health care? Look at England and Canada...FAILURES. As for other comments about taxing "unhealthy foods"... last I looked, obese people already pay extra in health bills...why ADD to it?
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By: Don on 6/16/2009 7:39AM
If you want to know about government efficiency, try asking the 11,000 Britons each year who DIE while waiting to receive treatment for treatable illnesses or the 8,000 Canadians who DIE while waiting for treatment. Oops! You can't; they're DEAD! Who knows? You could be next.
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By: Panda29 on 6/16/2009 9:17AM
It's none of the Governments business what we eat, drink, smoke unless we have a one-payer health system. That would be disasterous, costly and just plain stupid.
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By: Impeach Nobama on 6/16/2009 10:02AM
In gesture to Nobama I am getting a triple cheeseburger and chili fries for lunch! I will wash it down with a double strawberry shake.
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By: Impeach Nobama on 6/16/2009 10:15AM
repukeslie7, cute name, come up with that by yourself? I feel sorry for those who don't have insurance, but this plan Nobama is shoving on us is a copy and paste of Brittains and Canadas plans, and guess what Don is 100% correct. Nobama does not care about you. He cares about taxing us all and force feeding us his lib agenda. Thank goodness it will be over in 3 1/2 years.
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By: Tom on 6/16/2009 10:22AM
BillWatson's recipe for socialism. CLUE #1: VA is a disaster. Anyone wanting to model it either hasn't any idea about the problems, or simply don't care and want government running things regardless. CLUE #2: You CANNOT have competition between government and the private sector because it can never be fair. The private sector must not loose money. It either has to find efficiencies or it goes under. Government sticks its mits into the taxpayers' pockets no matter how wasteful and non-functional it is. CLUE #3: Even if the latter wasn't true, which it most certainly is, how could there be competition between private industry with government when government regulates that very industry? To put it simply, who wants to play a ball game against a team who's coaches also serve as the umpires?! CLUE #4: Regardless as to what BillWilson or anyone else here may want, what OBAMA and the Democrat Party leadership wants is total control over the country. Total and PERMANENT control. That's why we're seeing ACORN, a corrupt extention of the Democrat Party (but then, I'm being redundant) being pulled in to conduct the 2010 census. Obama and company intend to bring ALL of Chicago politics to D.C., which includes stealing elections through fraud. A check after the 2008 elections here in Virginia resulted in 80 percent of the voters ACORN had registered were NON-EXISTANT. That's how it works. In Chicago, even dead people vote, which is how the Democrats have OWNED that city and most of Cook County for more than 70 years now. They took over during the heyday of the Mafia, and have been in charge ever since. OBAMA and company want to control the major industries such as oil, auto-makers, banking, insurance, and especially healthcare. That way they can determine who lives and who dies. Obama's idea for a government entity supposedly "competing" with private health insurance companies is in order to draw people away from the private carriers. At first government coverage will be cheap and will have generous benefits. The government can do this because it will 'cook the books', running the program in the red for years, hidden under Obama's multi-trillion dollar deficit. The intent is that this will draw many people away from their private provider and to government. The more people leave, the higher the private insurers' premiums will go to make up for the losses, which will only make things worse. People will leave them in droves for the "cheaper" government coverage until he breaks the back of the private sector. This will be made worse by more and more government regulation, favoring the government program. Once he gets a sizable majority of Americans on the government system, then government will simply take over. Americans are, like the proverbial frog in the pan of warm water, sitting and allowing themselves to be boiled alive, never noticing the encroachment of government into areas in which has no Constitutional authority, and destroying our free market economy along the way.
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By: Rose on 6/16/2009 11:16AM
To have totally free health care for 300 million people, how high do you think the national tax would be? Should welfare/social security recipients get more money, so they can pay for the ??% of national tax, which will be added to every item that one will buy? Will this tax be used ONLY for health care, even if other urgend conflicts/matters arise? Do you really think it would work?
Lots of questions and something to think about first, before we accept a huge tax, which we won't be able to drop, if it doesn't work!
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By: jgelt on 6/16/2009 12:14PM
Hey, let's pass a new gas tax and we can all get free cars! Let's pass a new property tax and we can all have free houses! Let's pass a food tax and we can all have free food! No, wait?
This country is doomed. There is just no way around it. Idiocracy is here.
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By: Steve on 6/16/2009 12:43PM
You're an idiot.
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