Here's an idea for funding universal health care: make marijuana legal and tax the heck out of it.

[PinkTiger]

Also add a hefty portion of cigarette tax and liquor tax to the marijuana tax, and anything else in that category, and voila! The major part of the health care will be covered. The rest can be paid by users and employers.

Whatddya think???

(No, I'm not smoking anything.)
:hippie::hippie::hippie::hippie::hippie::hippie:

[datasuspect]

1. if i could get joints like cigs

i'd gladly pay at least $10 in taxes on each pack.

it'd still be better than the black market.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. Giant Pharma would "just say no"

and their minions in Congress will still carry the water of those doling out the money

[groovedaddy]

3. Sure, it would work

just like it did with alcohol after prohibition was ended - though the proceeds were not used for healthcare.
The problem is that pot can be used for many illnesses that the pharmaceutical companies make huge bucks on. The don't like the numbers.

[bamacrat]

4. It would be perfect.

As long as I could get better prices (and quality) than I could from some guy I would be a number one customer.

:smoke:

[plantwomyn]

5. Why leave the sugar and junk food pushers out of taxation?

Diabetes and obesity are two of the biggest health problems. Children with "adult" onset of diabetes will soon overwhelm the health system in this country. I say single payer health care. That means the government. Medicare/caid, has a 3% administration. How much do the HMO's pay administrators and how much is their profit margin? Add the cost and profits of insurance companies an THERE you have it.

[sandnsea]

7. Agreed

Although there is some kind of tax on sugar products at the restaurant level, although I've never understood exactly what that is. Most raw foods have a tax/fee of some sort that pays for inspections and promotional programs. It's possible the person who mentioned the syrup tax had it mixed up. But I definitely think if we keep taxing cigs and booze for health care, we have to add in junk food, sweets and fast food. Especially fast food, I never gain an ounce as long as I stay out of fast food places. Very weird.

[warren pease]

24. For-profit insurance profit margins, and other depressing stats...

Not sure about margins, largely because there are so many write-offs for the rest of the money they squander on paper pushing, shareholder return, benefits verification, advertising, executive salaries and other elements of the managed care bureaucracy – none of which do a single thing to provide actual health care.

And that's a significant sum of money; according to industry figures and analyst estimates, all that useless garbage (at least to patients whose bills aren't being paid) adds up to at least 25 percent of the insurance industry's per capita gross income, and some estimates range as high as 40 percent. In 2005, the last year I've seen comprehensive and audited numbers for, the American health care machine was a $2 TRILLION business, or $6,697 per capita -- by far the most expensive system in the world. Which means that at least $500 billion, and as much as $800 billion, was wasted in 2005 on non-medical items. I would bet all those dollar figures are somewhat higher now.

As to individual companies' profits, according to a recent article on Alternet, "last year, the top six health insurance companies had combined profits of more than $10 billion. What's amazing is that they netted so much after spending prodigious amounts on marketing and administration. In 2006 Wellpoint alone burned up nearly $9 billion in such costs -- nearly one quarter of what it paid out in actual benefits." Full article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/48371/?page=1

In any case, $800 billion would go a long way toward covering everybody in the country through a low-overhead, single-payer, universal-access system such as those found in every single other industrialized country on the planet -- and a bunch more with no practical claim to industrialization.

The consequences of the US system are predictably hideous. The World Health Organization's monumental 2000 study comparing the health care systems of 191 countries ranks the US 37th in a compilation of key indices that include average life span, average disease-free life span, average birth weight, infant mortality rate, access to necessary health care services, cost of those services, and so forth. 37th. Which puts us among such famous bastions of medical superiority as Slovenia (#38) and Domenica (#35), whatever the hell Domenica is. And I think it's safe to speculate that the US has fallen further in those rankings in the past seven years because of growing inequity of access and per capita costs.

This is from the WHO news release announcing the study, and nicely illustrates our situation:

"For the first time, the WHO has calculated healthy life expectancy for babies born in 1999 based upon an indicator developed by WHO scientists, Disability Adjusted Life Expectancy (DALE). DALE summarizes the expected number of years to be lived in what might be termed the equivalent of "full health." To calculate DALE, the years of ill-health are weighted according to severity and subtracted from the expected overall life expectancy to give the equivalent years of healthy life.

"The United States rated 24th under this system, or an average of 70.0 years of healthy life for babies born in 1999. The WHO also breaks down life expectancy by sex for each country. Under this system, U.S. female babies could expect 72.6 years of healthy life, versus just 67.5 years for male babies.

"'The position of the United States is one of the major surprises of the new rating system,' says Christopher Murray, M.D., Ph.D., Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. 'Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries.'"

And it's sucking the country dry. The U.S. health care system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product (13 percent in 2000; 16 percent in 2007) than any other country but gets lousy outcomes compared to universal-access countries. The United Kingdom, which spent just 6 percent of its 2000 GDP on health services, ranked 18th. Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore -- were rated close behind second-ranked Italy.

You can read through the news release and download the full report by following various links here:

http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html


I hate to ramble on, but this stuff is so important and it's completely ignored by the usual status quo cheer-leaders in mass media.

Best advice I've ever heard on dealing with the US health care system: Don't get sick.


wp

[wuushew]

6. all sales taxes are regressive

n/t

[damntexdem]

8. Along with tobacco. Really tax the hell out of IT!

And it wouldn't hurt to raise the taxes on alcohol a little bit, either.

[snappyturtle]

11. This is a bad day to talk taxes on alcohol.

Last Saturday our little community lost three adults,husband and wife and a friend to a drunk driver speeding at over 100 mph....killed him too. Today I can't think of a tax high enough for alcohol. We lost a barber, a pastry chef and a fireman.

[cgrindley]

9. That would be like taxing tomatoes

Taxing pot would be pointless as just about any idiot can grow a lifetime supply of high quality weed even after smoking a lifetime's supply of high quality weed.

[Ezlivin]

10. If growing high quality pot is so easy, why don't you do it?

And let me know when your first harvest is in.

I'll gladly pay Tuesday for a 420 today.

:)

(Apologies to Wimpy.)

Note: The aforementioned high quality pot is grown from select seeds in near perfect conditions, typically in high-dollar hydroponic gardens. Well, at least that's what I read somewhere.

[cgrindley]

13. I'm a Canadian living in the USA

I don't break any laws or social conventions.

But setting up a very small 10 plant hydroponic grow op isn't rocket science.

[plantwomyn]

15. Easier than that

the old 5 gal. bucket in the basement. Darn, I only have a crawl space!:smoke:

[Ezlivin]

17. I'm a half-Canadian living in misery

That is, the misery of not living in a socially liberal place such as Vancouver, BC.

I realize that setting up a hydroponic grow isn't rocket science, but keeping your pH, TDS and CO₂ in the right range along with meeting the light requirements does take a bit of knowledge. As does knowing your plant genetics and flowering times, not to mention proper harvest techniques (including drying and "curing").

Yeah, I read a lot and have friends in Holland.

:)

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Nice idea, but it's too easy to grow. n/t

[tjwash]

14. I can make beer pretty easy too, but I still like my Schaefer Lite from the store.

J/K...I'm more of a Hamms person.

[Blue_In_AK]

18. I hear what you're saying

but there is that sense of satisfaction in starting a project and bringing it to fruition ... not that I would know or anything. :hippie:

[Richard Steele]

20. Even with assloads of tax, legal pot would still be so cheap that most folks would buy, not grow.

Hell, I live in NC- I could easily grow tobacco in
my backyard. But I'm paying $21/carton because it saves
a lot of time and effort, y'know?

Even double those taxes, who wouldn't pay $35 a carton
for 200 middlin'-quality joints?

[fasttense]

16. Like tobacco, it could be grown very easily.

In fact many people here in East TN have tobacco plots. We could all convert to marijuana plots.

[MindPilot]

19. How about getting the fuck out of Iraq and using THAT money

to fund health care?

[plantwomyn]

21. Have another problem.

If they took the tax and offered FREE medically supervised assistance for smokers to quite I would agree with the taxes. As it is taxes are spent on things I don't want them to be spent on or things that I don't use. Let's have a tax form that lets us check off how we want it to be spent.

[beastieboy]

22. Think of all the money they would save on law enforcement.

Cops could actually go after bad guys.

[bleedingheart]

23. the only danger would be the rise in obseity and voter apathy

as everyone will be be self-medicating themselves to forget our horrible economy and government and they will eat all the country's stores of mac-n-cheese

[PinkTiger]

26. OK - so what you're saying is, everybody would be high and fat? Because of the munchies?

Surely not.
Alcohol is legal and I'm not always out there drunk on my ass.
Of course, I don't have a drinking problem.
But even if I did, there are laws.

LOL

[bleedingheart]

27. and the worst part would be the shortage of mac-n-cheese

;-)

it was meant to be a funny post...

[warren pease]

25. Part of the problem is the cultural hostility to social programs...

Logical solutions, such as yours, have to overcome both inherent resistance to the specific proposal -- e.g., pot's dangerous, pot's addictive, pot endangers productivity, pot's a major cause of lung cancer, and the rest of the backlash nonsense everyone's heard by now -- and the systemic, almost uniquely American trait of willfully fucking over the have-nots simply because we can, and because they're to blame for their own situation, and because economic Darwinism (Spencerian feel-good bullshit for the rich) has decreed that the fittest have enough money to pay for their own needs and how dare anyone ask for them to cover the less fortunate.

Such is the result of our christian culture, where loving one's neighbor is soooo First Century and now it's all about rugged individualism and Ayn Rand and standing on one's own two feet and all that other right wing horseshit used to keep the under classes wallowing in guilt and misery at their own perceived failings.


Kinda like this guy:

"To those of you who support socialized medicine: 'Because I live here I should get healthcare for nothing.' Please. The rich have better houses, better cars, better vacations because they can afford them. Why shouldn't their healthcare be better too? Contrary to the apparently presumed axiom, healthcare is not a guaranteed right.

"And the rich are getting tired of picking up the tab. Learn how to support yourself."

Posted by: Tired of paying for you | July 29, 2007 at 01:32 PM

The poor, overburdened rich. My heart bleeds. Miserable, selfish republican bastard.

More responses, most of which are 180 degrees out from the above:

http://buffalonews.typepad.com/inside_the_news/2007/07/no-simple-solut.html


Or this guy:

"Making it possible for individuals to own their health-insurance policies themselves, rather than getting them through their companies, would solve the problem. It would also reduce the political momentum behind socialized medicine.

"Republicans should ... propose market reforms that make insurance more affordable and portable. If such reforms are implemented, more people will have insurance."

Fucking dinosaur. Complete article here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWFkZDBlNjk3YjFhMDE1MWVlODc5NGM4MmQ4MmRhMTM=


Or this guy:

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3186.html

"Do you really want the government that gave us the public school system to provide our health care?" he asks. Which is one of the false phantoms industry apologists use to spread fear and doubt about anything progressive involving a government program. Basically, it's the anti-tax crowd all dressed up as defenders of the American way of screwing the poor and lower classes.

And no, I don't want the current government to do anything but get the fuck out of the white house and into the nearest maximum security prison, thank you. However, I think universal public education is a commendable goal, including all the way through college and grad school if achievement warrants it. I readily concede that the current state of public education is just awful, but it's nothing that can't be fixed by throwing a few hundred billion at the problem. Unfortunately, that's only an acceptable solution when committing mass murder overseas for control of oil reserves, not for funding programs that actually do people some fucking good for a change.

Moreover, these elitist bastards want a dull, uninformed, complacent society filled with non-critical consumers who will fall for any pitch if it's wrapped up in enough glitz and glamor and delivered by the celebrity du jour. Anything else is un-American.


So that's the other part of the problem and sensible, easily-implemented solutions such as you propose die in the narrow confines of the right wing mind -- if that's not an oxymoron.


wp


Edited to add yet another selfish prick to the quote list above.