Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
Smokers already pay huge tax when they buy cigarettes. I don't see why another should be added.

That would also be applicable to food. Heavy tax on unhealthy food, no more 3$ meals in McDonald's. If people were to pay 15$ for a meal, they wouldn't go there so much. Taxing fat people more is... complicated and can easily backfire.
I agree with Sarmatian about smokers, but not about fast food. If you did that, no one would eat fast food (they eat it because it is cheaper than other food, which it no longer would be), and killing the entire fast food industry all at once like that would devastate the economy. The whole point of Obama's proposed tax is to pay for the health care system, but when the economy takes a blow like that, less people are working, and have less money to pay taxes, it would be a lot harder to pay for anything. (and what right does the government have to take all those jobs away from people)
Anyway, who is to say what is unhealthy? Even scientists disagree all the time on what is and isn't. The truth is that there are many aspects to things, and a lot that we don't know.

And like I said Sarmatian, think of the fairness. If you are going to do that, will you also put a large tax on hockey equipment? How about sex toys? What about extreme sports equipment? You know what I mean? It is unfair to tax one thing that adds to the cost but not the other. At the same time though it would be impossible to fairly tax everything that adds to the cost.
That is why I think that the government should not be trying to run health care. Small companies have a hard time being fair and taking care of themselves. When the government takes health care over it will be just a massive company with near absolute power, and 100 times the capacity for corruption and mismanagment.