Thought you’d heard the last of Jonathan Gruber, did you? Check this out, from the end of a paper he delivered in 2010 to the National Institute for Health Care Management entitled “Taxing Sin to Modify Behavior and Raise Revenue” (PDF link):
Ultimately, what may be needed to address the obesity problem are direct taxes on body weight. While it is hard to conceive of this approach being a common public policy tool in the near term, such taxation may be happening indirectly through health insurance surcharges.
Instead of a tax on fat bodies, maybe we could have a tax on fatheads like Gruber? You could solve the deficit and pay off the national debt on what you’d raise in tax revenue from college towns alone.
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