The News Journal – Bethany Beach Wave Editorial
August 12, 2009

When Washington is in a panic, all kinds of strange things can happen. For example, it’s possible Congress will put an anti-fat tax in the health reform bill.

For the moment, no plan includes such a tax. However, it still is on the table.

The most likely form will be a tax on sugary soda drinks. Beverage associations are protesting loudly and lobbying expensively. But desperate lawmakers may succumb to the idea of easy money. They are getting help from a variety of sources, including the medical community and researchers.

Last week, a report from the Urban Institute and the University of Virginia recommended that obesity be treated the way smoking was just a few years ago: Tax it and make it unpopular.

“If recent trends continue,” the report said, “40 percent of adults will be obese in just six years and, for the first time in history, Americans’ average life span will shrink rather than grow.”

Another study, this one published in Health Affairs, estimated the medical cost of obesity in America was $147 billion in 2008.

That’s up from $78.5 billion in 1998.

Add both reports to another idea developing in Washington: Force health insurers to charge less for people with healthy lifestyles. Smokers are already financially penalized for being smokers.

However, let’s be careful. A tax on a bottle of soda may be a good thing if the idea is to make people drink less soda. It’s not such a good idea if it’s purpose is to shift the cost of health care to soda drinkers.

Our health care system is too expensive as it is. Adding more people to the insurance rolls will make it even more expensive.

All of us must take part in the solution, through higher taxes or paying more of our own way. We can’t depend on gimmicks like taxing only the rich, Botox users or soda drinkers.

The metaphor of equating the war on fat with the war on smoking also must be re-examined. Many poor children are fat because of a lack of exercise and a poor diet. Do we want to ostracize them the way smokers are ostracized?

As a society, we need to think through that idea.

By all means, let’s debate a tax on soda. But let’s not allow a panicked Congress to use it as a gimmick to avoid tougher, more thoughtful decisions.