Tummy Tax or Twinkie Tax? The Irony of Socialized, Single-Payer Medicine

President Obama will address Congress this week to try and revive the movement for healthcare reform. He’s been back and forth on whether or not he supports a single-payer/socialized medicine plan or a plan without a single-payer government option. Until this weekend, I thought that the catch 22 regarding the far left wing of the Democratic Party was whether they could stomach “just” a healthcare reform bill, or if the party would eat its own, attack the moderate Blue Dog Democrats for refusing to back a single-payer plan, and fall on their swords for their socialist medical craving.

You see, the American people do not want a single-payer/socialized government option in healthcare reform. The polls show that clearly as do the Town Hall meetings where Democrats from Congress have had more than just an earful from their protesting constituents. So, if Democrats want healthcare reform to pass, they have to drop the single-payer option because moderate Blue Dog Democrats have to listen to their constituents, and if they vote against them, then their voters will remove them from office, and the Democrats will lose control of Congress.

However, the far left wing of the Democratic Party controls the leadership in Congress. They want their socialized medicine. They want it bad. In the House of Representatives, 83 far left Democrats said they will not pass a healthcare reform bill that doesn’t have the single-payer/government option of socialized medicine. The House is also where Blue Dog Democrats blocked passage of a healthcare bill in August because their constituents didn’t want the single-payer option.

In the Senate, far left Democrats want their socialized medicine bigtime, but they waited too long. When Sen. Ted Kennedy was alive, Democrats had a big enough majority to override a filibuster from Republicans who do not want socialized medicine included in healthcare reform. Now that he’s dead, the Democrats won’t have enough votes to ram through a bill until his seat is filled with a Senator who will tow the party line against the will of the American people.

But even with all that, the real catch 22 is not whether to have or not to have a single-payer, socialized healthcare, government option. No, the real conundrum is how to pay for it. Democrats promised in 2006 to balance the budget, end pork spending by revealing names of Congressmen who put wasteful programs into bills, and to do pay-as-you-go spending. 3 yrs later, they have not. President Obama promised for 2 years that he could do his entire domestic agenda (TRILLIONS of dollars in new spending) just by cutting waste from the Federal Budget, but he’s already spent TRILLIONS while only trimming a few hundred million from the budget (a lot of money to be sure, but literally less than .1% of what is needed).

Democrats tell us that healthcare reform (even with a single-payer, government option) will pay for itself with the reduced costs of such a mammoth program, and by $500million in cuts to the Medicare program which is already underfunded, running out of money, and…they can’t/won’t say why they haven’t made those cuts already. Given all this, and the unprecedented spending that’s already been done by the Obama Administration, many people expect healthcare to be paid for by taxes.

Some have proposed adding the amount of money that a person’s insurance spends on healthcare to be added to their taxable income. This would raise people’s taxes. It would specifically raise taxes on the sickest people who-because they are the sickest-spend the most and need the most healthcare.

Others have proposed adding taxes to unhealthy things. A soda pop tax, more cigarette and tobacco taxes, even taxes on fast food have all been proposed as ways to pay for healthcare while making healthier lifestyles more attractive to Americans (thus reducing the cost of a single-payer, government option/socialized medicine).

And here is the real problem. Democrats usually describe themselves as liberal or progressive. Core to their belief is the idea that people should pay a progressive tax-the wealthiest people who gain the most by what America has to offer should pay the most. Additionally, progressives believe that people who gain the least from the United States, the poorest Americans, shouldn’t pay taxes since they’re not getting as much reward as the wealthy. Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians believe everyone should pay the same in taxes. We’re all equal. We should all be treated equally, and we all have an equal ability to succeed or fail depending on what we do ourselves rather than on what the nation gives us for free or in some sort of aid.

This weekend I was chatting with friends about progressive taxation, the tax ideas that might pay for a government option/socialized medicine, and I realized the hard choice for the Democrats. I suggested (for purposes of rhetorical debate) that every American should get have to get a physical every year, and at that physical their doctor would weigh them, assess their overall health, and sign a tax form. The form would tell the IRS how overweight and unhealthy people are. Then, at tax time, for every pound that a person was overweight, they should have to pay $1000 in taxes for the single-payer, government option/socialized medicine. This “Tummy Tax” idea was rejected by popular consent.

Friends preferred a tax on junk food to pay for healthcare. I called it a “Twinkie Tax.” This Twinkie Tax, however, is unfair by the rules of progressive taxation as it is an even tax for everyone rather than just the people who need it most. Not every Twinkie bought/sold/consumed leads to healthcare costs. Eaten in moderation with self-control, there’s no reason it should be a burden on a society’s health. Instead, the people who need the coverage the most are those who eat so many Twinkies, so much junk food, who smoke the most, etc, those are the people who benefit the most and should be taxed the most under the rules of progressive taxation. Now, some would argue that a small tax on Twinkies eaten in moderation is a moderate tax, but abusers of Twinkies pay more. The cost is not just small tax on a Twinkie. Americans who buy a Twinkie, work hard doing exercise and correct their diet for the Twinkie, those venerable hard workers do not deserve to be punished as much as the people who are gluttonous. They work hard for not just their money, but their health-health that costs.

In the United States we have a progressive tax structure with caveats. Alaskan Inuit-American fisherman get special tax breaks. Married couples and unmarried Americans pay different taxes. Still, for the most part the system is progressive. The top 1% pay almost 30% of the taxes. They are taxed more because (according to progressive Democrats) they benefit more from the nation. By that standard, the American people who are the sickest, who are hurt the worst, who are the fattest, laziest, weakest, these people will benefit the most from government healthcare, and they should pay the most. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise must accept that if we all should pay the SAME share instead of a “FAIR” share then there’s no reason a factory worker should pay less in taxes than the richest man in America, and there’s no reason that a single-parent living in a trailer park or ghetto shouldn’t pay the same amount in taxes as the President of the United States.

If Progressive Democrats want healthcare, they need to decide if they want a progressive tax to pay for it (the sickest, laziest, fattest, weakest, oldest Americans pay the most in taxes), or if they want a flat tax on everyone. It’s a choice between the Twinkie Tax and the Tummy Tax