My response to "listening exercise" on proposed NHS reforms
Arizona is proposing fining obese Medicaid recipients who do not comply with a diet. People are complaining that this represents a "nanny-state" mentality but if the state is providing your healthcare and you are behaving in a way which makes this more expensive, why shouldn't the state try to recoup some of that extra expense? Fining non-dieters sounds impracticable but it would be fairly straightforward to allocate a specific cost to a wide range of activities which would tend to make people less healthy and hence to require more expensive healthcare. One could assign such a cost not only to each cigarette or each unit of alcohol but also each calory of food consumed. Thus there could not only be components of tobacco and alcohol duty which were badged as related to healthcare costs but also a health tax on food and drink related to calorific and salt content. As an example this would either make diet drinks cheaper than their sugar-containing equivalents or else the ma