There Should Be a Fat Tax Introduced

I agree with you there. Healthcare is disproportinately disseminated to people with little to no sense of personal responsibility under this line of thinking. In your first set of arguements though you didn't mention trying to use that "fat tax" to offset the costs of their larger health bills. That form of offset WAS already the norm amongst all healthcare and insurance providers in that your premiums were adjusted based on your lifestyle. Many required blood tests and asked health related questions to assess your liability on the rest of their members when you start making claims. Public funded healthcare took this form of offsetting costs away when they made it gov't run and for the public. Now you want to go back and find a way to basically do the same? Make healthcare affordable by all then tax them on the backside for their eating habits, or smoking habits, or drinking habits or whatever? That makes no sense. Private companies already had that loophole figured out and accounted for in their policies and people frowned on it and made them look like the bad guy for charging more or denying people based on their increased liability. Your wanting to tax people for what they eat is no different without using that money to offest the cost of the food also. You would HAVE to offset the cost of that food to make it affordable for people to unanimously choose to use it in the first place, else you are just further excluding certain people from the healthcare you think they are all entitled to by natural right (sigh). So, your proposition is contingent on using the funds to both offset the cost of the food so they can have the ability to get on this bandwagon of yours and also the money would have to be used to still offset health costs (which you presume will decrease, since everyone will be eating only your health foods). Also, the numbers you posted about taxing tobacco and alcohol stunned me. Thats great that the gov't was able to meet that NHS mark ... but you make it look like their in the business of making money off of use at 3x the amount needed?! 3x?! Thats a gross mistepping of their bounds. They should not be controlling people at all, let alone turning a profit off of it. Then that money goes to what? Subsidise some other effort that does not pay for itself? Sounds like alot of excess fat in the gov't that will be kept around, again not because of it's own merit, but because of some excessive taxing going on from other programs. "Health experts believe such taxes will encourage food manufacturers to make products that have a reduced fat content " and that consumers won"t even notice the difference in taste " and they might be far healthier as a result." Where is this ever stated to be their responsibility?? It is not the responsibility of any government i have ever lived under. And never will be. This is a waste of time on the part of the officials I voted in to office. Its not even the responsibility of the company making these foods to do such a thing. They only exist because they provided a product myself and others enjoyed in the first place. The minute they change their purpose to that of thinking themselves the providers of my health and taking responsibility for my decisions ... theyve overstepped their purpose aswell. Read some of their mission statements. MARS, CocaCola, Kraft, whatever. None of them are talking about feeling responsible for the general health of the public in their statements. They are supposed to be providing a product consistent with what people like and nothing more. If they start limiting their products to whatever is affordable to make by modifying it to dodge extra gov't taxes ... the minute they do that they die off ... and people will find another brand that can provide. This is essentially food censorship. Not a form of control I want anyone to have over me. Especially if they have a narrative!! The gov't doesn't get to have that narrative. They don't get to have any narrative other than the ones laid out in the constitution to protect my freedoms. They are supposed to be protecting my freedoms not protecting me from them! Protecting me from my own freewill. Thats what this all sounds like.