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Overweight people should pay 'fat tax' to cover healthcare costs, German MP says
The Telegraph ^ | 7/22/2010 | Allan Hall in Berlin

Posted on 07/22/2010 11:15:40 PM PDT by bruinbirdman

Germany's health system is funded by a series of mandatory health insurance funds, all of which are reporting serious deficits as the system is overused.

Recently the German Teachers' Association recommended weighing children in class each day and reporting the seriously overweight to social services, who would have the power to remove them to clinics.

"The question must be admitted whether the immense costs that, for example, arise from excessive consumption of food, can be permanently paid out of the consolidated health system," said Marco Wanderwitz, the conservative MP for the state of Saxony.

"I think it's sensible that people who knowingly live unhealthily carry a responsibility for it in a financial respect," said Mr Wanderwitz, who is also head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats's group of young parliamentarians . . .

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: dictatorship; germany; government; health; healthcare; individualrights; obamacare; overweight; socialisthealthcare; socializedmedicine; taxes
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To: bruinbirdman

“who would have the power to remove them to clinics.”

Hitler would approve. You can take the Nazis out of Germany but you can’t take the Nazi out of Germans. Ein volk! Ein Reich! Seig heil!


61 posted on 07/23/2010 5:08:13 AM PDT by sergeantdave
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*


62 posted on 07/23/2010 6:06:34 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3 (Obama is everything Oklahoma is not.)
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To: bruinbirdman

OBAMACARE will want this too. Early voting is under way in Tennessee, get out there and VOTE!


63 posted on 07/23/2010 6:24:18 AM PDT by GailA (obamacare paid for by cuts & taxes on most vulnerable Veterans, retired Military, disabled & Seniors)
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To: Kennard; Plumberman27; Pollster1; RJL; bruinbirdman
It can be argued that fit people use more health care services in a lifetime because they live longer. If this scheme is implemented in some form, the greatest unintended consequence will be that health care costs will go up, not down

Well, most doctors agree that the bulk of cost always happens during the last five years of your life, whether that is 67-72 or 88-93, because that's when people tend to get hospitalized a lot. A healthy, active lifestyle simply means that expensive things like dementia set in later.

I take you feel that people that jog should also pay additional taxes since in later life they end up having get their knee joints replaced. And what of the homosexual crowd who feel it is normal to have a mans penis thrust up the anal aperture? Now there is normal behavior. And while you are at it lets tax office workers since they sit on the asses all day and get hardly no activity unless they belong to a gym. Oh but the again there is that jogging tax. Let's tax black people too since they get sickle cell. Come on grow up.

The problem with this topic is that if you try to apply it minute differences in sizes it doesn't work. A moderately overweight person with an active livestyle (and no, I don't mean tall, muscular men which always are being discriminated against by BMI measurements, I simply mean someone who likes to eat but still is able to play with the kids or ride a bike) has no terribly increased risk at all. However, it is a fact that the morbidly or super-obese with their sedentary lifestyles, have significantly increased risks of expensive conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular problems. Which brings me to another fun fact:

Since certain “lifestyles” also increase health care costs, how about a tax on those choices? I don’t think that would be as popular with liberals and socialists as taxes on smokers and overweight people. / How expensive is it to treat HIV and Aids?

On average, lifetime healthcare costs for the super-obese (n.b.: not the moderately obese) are about the same (~half a million) as for people with HIV/AIDS, mainly because of expensive surgeries.
64 posted on 07/23/2010 11:32:32 AM PDT by wolf78 (Inflation is a form of taxation, too. Cranky Libertarian - equal opportunity offender.)
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To: TNdandelion
The free market already "taxes" all the people you describe! Just look at insurance rates for guys under 25, especially if they are single. Likewise, up until recent changes in health care regulations, the free market did the same to pregnant women because they left the workforce and lost promotions, salary, and wages.

In a mandatory health care system where everyone is covered, which is where we are headed in 2014, fat people no longer cover the burden of being overweight, which includes higher cases of knee replacement, diabetes equipment, heart operations, and a checklist of other problems. Instead of paying for his or her choices, the current system allows a fat person to increase costs to the "system" and pass on his or her stupidity to everyone else.

That means a guy who does everything right, takes care of himself, saves his money, and is in great shape has to pay higher taxes to cover a mandatory medical system to pay for an idiot who is 300+ pounds overweight and made poor choices. That is the definition of socialism - when you take from one person who works to subsidize the stupidity and poor choices of another.

Normally, the free market takes care of it. If you have a mandatory health program, though, it screws with the system so you have one of two choices: Either

1.) appeal the health care system and let everyone survive on their own, or

2.) tax those who cost more, like an insurance company does to teenage males, and pass the savings on to those who cost less, like an insurance company does to 40 and 50 year old mothers who are far safer drivers than average.

If mandatory health care is repealed (which will be impossible with Obama in the White House), then taxing fatness would be wrong because the free market will take care of it. As long as it remains in place so there is no downside or disincentive to obesity because we are all picking up the tab, the only other choice is to tax it.

I have a problem paying for other people's choices. I have a right to smoke and drink myself to death but if I expect other people to cover the cost, it is theft. So ... either repeal health care or tax fat people. But if you keep demanding that responsible, hard working adults subsidize others who are foolish, stupid, or lazy, the rubber band will only stretch so far before there is a backlash.

65 posted on 07/23/2010 11:43:21 AM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: thecabal
There is nothing righteous about it and I agree with you. I just don't think anyone else should pay for my choices or that I should have to pay for theirs. I have no problem with you being overweight, just being told that it is my responsibility to cover the cost of people who are, just as I don't expect you to cover the cost of a liver transplant if I decide to start drinking like a fish tomorrow.

You aren't "defective" because you're overweight anymore than I am "good" because I have money or "bad" because I come from the South / Midwest. Our life is the sum culmination of all the choices we have made up until this point in time. Some of them are good, some of them are bad.

As long as we own those choices, everything is okay. The problem comes when people start demanding their friends, family, neighbors, and fellow citizens pick up the tab. Morality has nothing to do with it, it is about justice and fairness. A man should be able to determine his own future and destiny, not have society impose it upon him. If I start smoking tomorrow, you shouldn't have to worry about your taxes increasing because of my bad choices. The current system forces that to happen and it is wrong.

66 posted on 07/23/2010 11:50:18 AM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: Lucius Cornelius Sulla

EXACTLY.


67 posted on 07/23/2010 11:50:45 AM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: bruinbirdman
>> "Personally, I count down my demise one week earlier, from 120 years, every time I chose to eat a steak. <<

Amen. And I say that is completely and totally worth it.

68 posted on 07/23/2010 11:51:59 AM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: Plumberman27
I have a right to smoke and drink myself to death. I don't have a right to expect you to pay for it. My point is that in a mandatory health care system, which we now have (or, will have in 2014), incentive and disincentive has been taken out of the system.

The health care industry should work like the free market. A teenage driver pays many times more in car insurance premiums than a 40 or 50 year old mother because he is more likely to get in accidents. No one argues this is unfair; why should the responsible subsidize the irresponsible any more than is absolutely necessary for society to function?

With mandatory health care and ever-increasing medical entitlements, my bad choices now get added to the national debt. The free market has been taken completely out of the equation. Short of repealing these entitlements (which I don't see Congress *ever* having the political will to do because they are cowards), the only way to keep from destroying the currency and bankrupting the nation is to mimic the free market by creating a system where everyone has to effectively pay for his or her choices.

If I cost the "system" 3x as much as average (which is really you, your family, and your children because there is no "system", only future taxes), I should have to pay for it out of my own pocket. To expect you to cover it is socialism. That is the definition of the word. Unless entitlement spending is repealed, the only way to do that is to charge on a per-person basis for services used. It is an imperfect solution but better than the alternative of printing money until it is worthless. (If you can figure out how to repeal the entitlements, then all of this is a moot point.)

69 posted on 07/23/2010 12:01:08 PM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: napscoordinator

What about anorexics and bulimics?


70 posted on 07/23/2010 12:02:46 PM PDT by ShandaLear (The price of Obamacare? 30 pieces of silver.)
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To: Poison Pill
>>I don't know that I buy the argument that fat people cost more. There may be some higher costs up front. But then they die sooner. Old age is the real black hole for health care costs. I've never seen an obese 90 year old. <<

That is a very good, valid, intelligent argument. With the shorter lifespan, perhaps the higher operations cost less than chronic care or medications would over several decades.

You would need to factor in the income taxes paid for the longer lifespan to get an accurate reflection, and probably discount the cash flows back to the present, but yeah ... that is a good point. (Because you could get into a situation where someone costs the system $[x] times more by living longer but they also paid $[y] more in federal, state, and local taxes over all those years, offsetting their costs to some degree.) It would take some time and a roomful of PhD's to do the calculations but it would be interesting to find out the answer!

71 posted on 07/23/2010 12:05:47 PM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: WallStreetCapitalist
P.S.: I should point out when I say, "pay for an idiot who is 300+ pounds" that several members of my family, some of whom are incredibly intelligent, qualify for this statement. I was using an example of someone who just refuses to work and eat little debbie's all day long. I'm not saying intelligence and weight are linked at all, so I apologize it reads that way; that was bad editing on my part so, yeah, epic fail there.
72 posted on 07/23/2010 12:09:46 PM PDT by WallStreetCapitalist
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To: ShandaLear

Good question but since that wasn’t the topic. I will wait judgment until they do a possible tax on that. lol.


73 posted on 07/23/2010 12:09:46 PM PDT by napscoordinator
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To: gov_bean_ counter
the fraudulent BMI as the metric.

Tall people are known to earn a bit more salary on average. It's because their brains tend to have more volume so height is a visual indicator for brains. It's not fair! Using the BMI, which doesn't work for tall people, is a way to tax them. It's a height redistribution tax.

There's nothing leftists won't envy and create a penalty tax for. Leftists are especially driven mad by visible size differences. Leftism usually starts in childhood with "your slice of birthday cake is bigger than mine!" and progresses to "Your SUV is bigger than mine!", "Your house is bigger than mine!", "Your family is bigger than mine!", etc.

74 posted on 07/23/2010 12:15:02 PM PDT by Reeses
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To: WallStreetCapitalist

My point was that you can’t stop at fat people if you are going to jump on board the Obamacare wagon.


75 posted on 07/26/2010 1:10:26 AM PDT by TNdandelion
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