A tax on high-sugar soft drinks would help pay for health-care reform that ensures all Americans have regular access to doctors and slows health-care cost growth. It also should improve Americans’ health.
In April, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that the average American consumes nearly three times as many high-sugar soft drinks as he or she did a few decades ago. Roughly half of teenage boys drink more than two six-packs of soft drinks every week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This has helped drive up the nation’s obesity rate. U.S. children aged 6 to 19 are three times as likely to be overweight as they were in 1970.
Americans’ growing thirst for sugary drinks has increased both the prevalence of illnesses like diabetes and heart disease and the nation’s health-care costs. In fact, increasing obesity accounted for about a quarter of the growth in real per capita health spending between 1987 and 2001, according to an Emory University study.
A tax on soda, heavily sweetened «sport drinks,» and similar products would reduce obesity and its related costs by discouraging consumption. Admittedly, it would hit poorer people harder than the wealthy ones when measured as a share of their income. But poorer people would benefit the most from the universal health coverage the tax would help pay for, since they’re much more likely to be uninsured. And people who buy fewer sugary drinks because of the tax would reap health benefits.
For these reasons, the tax should be one of the revenue increases and spending reductions Congress adopts to fund health reform.