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Of all the developed nations on the planet, only two - the United States and Mexico - fail to provide universal health care. As a result, our health care system is more costly, less equitable, and more corrupt. We have millions uninsured and millions more who can't afford preventive care, leading to vastly increased emergency room costs when minor sickness aren't treated and bloom into major infections.

What does all this have to do with taxing junk food?

As health care looms large on the agenda in the upcoming presidential election, and candidate after candidate presents major health care reform plans, it seems more and more inevitable that the United States will finally bow to reason and compassion and institute a universal system of health care; at the very least, major steps in that direction will be taken.

At that moment, consumption of junk food becomes more than a personal vice; it becomes more than a victimless crime. At that moment, junk food intake becomes a direct expense for each and every tax-payer.

Like smoking, drinking, drug use, driving without a seat belt, and a host of other unhealthy life choices, junk food intake drives up the cost of health care by damaging the bodies and minds of those who ingest it. Making up the cost of providing health care for junk food abusers through taxation is not only fair, it is pro-actively addressing the issue at its root - making junk food more expensive is bound to drive consumers towards real food and the health benefits such food provides. This is also a boon for the local farmer over the industrial farmer, which provides the added benefit of reducing carbon imprint (local produce isn't shipped thousands of miles in gas-guzzling tractor-trailers, nor is it processed in immense factories).

Failing to enact a tax on junk food is failing to account for the true cost of junk food; it is effectively subsidizing poor health habits. The advent of universal health care provides a proper legal and philosophical framework for the special taxation of junk food - and it is about time!

Learn more about this author, Timothy Ellis.
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