S-CHIP

[pecunium]

I am of a mixed mind on this.

1: I favor expanding healthcare. I think, honestly, it would be a good thing to have Medicare tweaked, and converted to a national health care (given that we already subsidise the present system with 200 billion in tax credits, to pay more, get less and have tens of million with no health care..., but that's all a different topic).

2: I am glad to see most people agree that kids ought to be covered (if for no other reason that a quick fix when the problems show up, and maybe the establishment of good habits both saves, and makes, money later).

3. It doesn't hurt that the veto/votes against make the present regime in the White House look more like the bastards they are.

But (had to be a but, because of that mixed mind): I don't think the present funding is the way to do it.

I have problems with sin taxes (honestly, I have problems with using the tax code to perform micro managements. Housing... Ok, because that's a leveller. Education, same thing. Encouraging the non-growing of soybeans... Not so much). If someone wants to buy booze, let 'em.

A tax to cover the costs of making sure the distillery is safe, no problem. A tax to discourage people from drinking by making it more expensive, not so much.

S-CHIP is built on a different idea. Smoking is bad (I'll grant that). Society, as a whole, is down on smoking (this isn't so bad). So we can soak the smokers to pay for something we want.

It's that last which bothers me. One, it's morally wrong to say, "we don't like what you do, so we're going to take your money; while leaving the thing you do legal."

Two, if this does what such taxes usually do (decrease the number of smokers), then the money will have to come from somewhere else.

There is a way the second can be avoided: the Government does things to keep the number of smokers, at least, constant.

I'd like to see someone just stand up and say, "We need to help kids. It will take money. "X" susbsidies/incentives/loopholes, are worth less than this is." Or just bite the bullet and say, "If we want this, we have to pay for it, the tax bite will go up by 5 cents per person."

Otherwise, we have to encourage smoking, accept that this is going to have rising costs, and diminishing revenues, or make smoking something the gov't encourages; for the sake of the children.

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that tying much of anything into some specific income resource is usually a less-than-stellar idea. It might work to advance the original sale, but ... whatever happened to the idea that a tax on the CA State Lottery would pay for the entire Public Education System? Not to mention the many multi-purpose tools that don't work really well for anything. But then, I have the impression that alcohol use and obesity/dietary factors are more solidly-established as health-damaging factors than tobacco-use. (I should note that, AFAIK, my HMO charges me a higher monthly rate because I am a smoker.)