One way to pay for universal healthcare

Everyone deserves a chance at good health, rich, poor or somewhere in between. What no one deserves is healthcare on-the-house. If universal healthcare is to work, everyone will need to do their part to stay healthy.

Of course, there's no way to provide government incentives to get people to take care of themselves. At least not directly. Uncle Sam can't impose a "fat tax" on people, nor send the FBI out to make sure they exercise when they're supposed to.

What the Old Man can do, however, is tax people's bad habits. The Uncle's been doing that for years with cigarettes and alcohol. Why not do it with carbs?

Let's have a federal excise tax on all prepared foods and beverages that exceed a standardized carbohydrate level. This will drive up the cost of soft drinks and sugary foods. It's the ideal way to get heavy consumers of this stuff to pay for the consequences: diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea and other obesity-related conditions.

Unfortunately, it'll hit members of the Corn Refiners Association and their packaged-foods customers particularly hard. The corn refiners produce high-fructose corn syrup, one of their biggest money-makers, and one of worst culprits in the obesity pandemic.

I really don't want to pick on one of the few industries still left in the United States. However, corn growers can barely grow enough corn right now to meet the increasing demand for bio-fuels (have you tried to buy corn this summer for under 50¢ an ear?). Surely growers and refiners can continue to keep their stockholders happy--and CEOs rolling in dough--even with a tax on corn syrup.

Let's get the very people who wind up over-using the healthcare system to either pay their fair share, or better yet, curb their sweet teeth. Go ahead, O pansy Congress of ours. Take a few bucks less next year from the corn industry, and save a lot of American lives.