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We have just such taxes -- on alcohol and tobacco at any rate (see earlier postings on "sin taxes" in this thread). A large part of the justification given for these extraordinarily high excise taxes is to cover the increased "social costs" of consumption of these products. Health care is obviously one of those social costs.

So far, there aren't any extraordinary costs on fattening foods -- but, it's not for lack of supporters. If we were to tax "fattening" foods -- which foods should those be? Advocates of the Atkins diet would even include whole wheat, which is otherwise touted as a health food.

What about dangerous activities? When you think about it, just about anything we do can be dangerous -- so, where do we stop? Actually, not doing anything is dangerous too -- so we'd have to tax couches and Lazy-boy recliners.

If we had a competitive market for health insurance, rather than a government monopoly; various companies could offer different premium schedules, according to whatever health factors they thought were important. Then, we could chose the policies that work best for us, individually. In that way, there would be a market test of the "extra burden".

We have competing private health insurance here. The government even gives a rebate to people who take out private health insurance. People who don't take out private health insurance have to rely on the public system. As in Canada, the public system has very long waiting lists. However, if you have private health insurance you can get treated very quickly.