Totally_Baffled wrote:I think you make some fair points , but the amount of government interference in peoples lives and/or the free market is a very grey area. Lets take an extreme example of your idea, let consumers have access to whatever they want and do not try and influence their consumption at all.
That would mean removing all purchases taxes off alcohol, tobacco, petrol, etc
How would you decide who to charge and not to charge? How on earth would you prove what was medically down to "unhealthy" behaviour?
If they over consume alcohol and/or tobacco and eat nothing but shit BUT CANNOT pay then what do you do?
Refuse them treatment? Let them die? would you like to be the doctor that says to the (angry) relatives that you are not going to treat their son/daughter/mother/father because they are overweight, and/or have no evidence of excercise and/or smoke/drink?
Answer - Yes. Refuse them treatment - or rather, give them the choice. There would be very few who absolutely couldn't afford it. For sure there will always be grey areas, but I think we can see very clearly who takes care of themselves and who doesn't. It's not "PC" to say so, but in many cases it's clear. People would have a choice - to exercise self-control or not. They then have a second choice - to pay for treatment or not.
Frankly speaking the current system drives me mad. The NHS is coming apart at the financial seams trying to cope with what this country throws at it. And yet we STILL have people insisting upon "their right" to have cosmetic surgery on the NHS, or foot-stamping that they can't get the latest eye-wateringly expensive designer drug, all paid by someone else.
It's easy to spend someone else's money - all I ask is that if you do, you make a reasonable effort to avoid the need.
As for other consumption taxes, what about petrol? If we remove the tax, it would be 35p a litre - I guess we would probably all driving SUV's by now and have absolutely zero public transport? We probably would drive even more, getting even less excercise!
Why apply it to petrol? My point is regarding where you and I are paying for others - in the case of petrol, if you choose to pay a fortune for an SUV, it doesn't cost me any more. I've no problem with tax in that respect. It's when the government tax some people who have worked hard to avoid cost, and the money goes straight to those who haven't.
In the case of petrol, I don't think even the current system is ideal. Some closer approach to contraction and convergence would be better. At present the more money you have, the more freedom you can buy (what some would consider perfect capitalism - everything priced!), and that will become more and more so as petrol prices rise. So here I think tax may have a place to influence behaviour positively. In the case of health, the current tax structure gives reverse incentives.
A very tricky area indeed!?
I agree in a sense - it's perhaps contentious, but IMO that's only because we've gone so far toward creating a "dependent" society, suckling from an enormous bureaucracy who likes them that way. Changing anything from what is comfortable will cause complaints, but I see the future as much more positive as part of a society of independent people, rather than dependents. Especially when you consider the potential impossibility of funding the NHS in a peak oil environment.
