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February 4, 2012
Conservative MP calls for a 'fat tax'
Published: 22 Jul 10 14:55 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20100722-28685.html
Overweight people and others who pursue unhealthy lifestyles should have to pay more into Germany's healthcare system to cover the extra costs they create, a conservative politician said on Thursday.
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“The question must be admitted whether the immense costs that, for example, arise from excessive consumption of food, can be permanently paid out of the consolidated health system,” he told daily Bild.
“I think it’s sensible that people who knowingly live unhealthily carry a responsibility for it in a financial respect.”
Wanderwitz, 34, describes himself on his website as a keen squash and football player.
Health economist Jürgen Wasem joined the call, demanding that Germany consider a “chocolate tax.”
“One should, as with tobacco, tax the purchase of unhealthy consumer goods at a higher rate and partly maintain the health system. That applies to alcohol, chocolate or risky sporting equipment such as hang-gliders.”
According to the Bild report, one study has found that fat people cost the health system €17 billion a year.
Opposition Social Democrats health spokesman Karl Lauterbach sharply rejected the idea that the overweight should pay higher contributions to the statutory health insurance system, describing it as an idiotic suggestion.
DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)
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Your comments about this article:
what about tax for noise pollutions, like muscle cars, bikes and freight trains, which are causing sleepless nights for residents living near roads and railway tracks?
sleepless nights can cause bad health, and bad health require more health coverage!
what do you think?
Why you get fat is easily understoof... if you're putting in more calories than you burn then you'll get fat, pretty bloody simple. Metabolism is just the rate at which your body burns the energy it's not some magical word you can pull out to try and not blame fat people for being fat as most do (they often blame it in the 3rd person like Mr. Metabolism comes to their house, pins them down and shoves cake into their face).
If you are medically overweight you should get charged more in insurance. If obese, a lot more.
Seriously. Health insurance is overly expensive to begin with in Germany. Instead of cutting the service level with vague & cheap populist crap like this, maybe it is time to put the insurers and pharmaceutical companies on a diet of delivering better value for money? I pay more than twice as much insurance fees than I used to in Finland or the Netherlands. And I get exactly nothing in return.
lol
(the lousy board filter wouldn't let me write "LOL" and it promptly deleted my original message [must be DE software] to add to the stupidity)
I must however admit, that for the most part, real change comes only through psychology. They keep making it more and more expensive for those who want to smoke, and yet people continue to pay the higer prices.
"Change the mind, change the behavior."
a) Tax cigarettes more. Its still cheap. Ban smoking everywhere & ask the smoker to pay for using smoking zone.
b) Add more tax for alcohol. Liquor is still cheap.
c) Make sure no cheap version of beer or wine or any form of alcohol is sold in Lidl,Aldi. Beer should be sold at min rate of 3.20 per bottle(330ml).
d) Increase cost of wurst. Replace frozen meat section with a proper Metzgerei. With that people will buy lesser and needed quantity.
f) Subsidise fitness centers & bicycles
g) Make sure the escalators & lifts in U-bahn/S-Bahn work with some sort of access card ie., only for disabled & elderly. If the rest wants to use it make them pay & use.
h) Tax all fried foods, chocalates & Ice-cream
i) 100% tax on Sugar. Its too cheap.
j) Tax all frozen & processed foods. Also make the buyer pay for disposing the garbage.
k) Ban use of plastic vessels & boxes which can be used for storing, re-heating food
I can go on.. but I guess I will get killed if I add more.. :)
However, weed should be legalized and appropriately taxed.
Smokes and drinks can be taxed prorated on the damage that they do.
Hard drugs use is self limiting and users would need to be rated for future rehab.
Anyone who has a genuine problem, i.e., something that isn't by choice.. e.g., overweight because of a thyroid problem, should of course be exempt from any such higher taxation, that would be simple enough to implement via a doctor's diagnosis on the patient.
Great idea,that would make me exempt,my girlfriend and most other overweight people.
That is the biggest health problem people suffer from in Europe.
http://www.thyroid.org/patients/patient_brochures/weight.html