Why don't these companies just pivot harder towards diet sodas? Seems like a win-win.
And that's the crux of the problem, isn't it?
If the U.S. had a single-payer healthcare system, you can bet it would care a lot more about issues like obesity, pollution, and all the things that make people sick and would make the government pay more for healthcare. It would have an incentive to reduce those issues.
Instead, the U.S. has a system where it's "profitable" to have sick people, so the stuff that makes people sick is kept in place. It's the same kind of the same perverse incentives we see with the private prison industry.
For the population at large, MOST health care costs are accumulated at 60+, see this graph[0]. In fact ages 1-50, on average, cost almost as much as 65-75. And worse still from retirement people pay a lot less tax.
Why is this relevant? Smokers and the Obese often die after their working (and taxpaying) life but before their expensive retirement. This means that while their last few years might be more expensive, their costs over the course of their life may be half that of someone that lived until 85.
The ironic thing is that obesity/smoking might save social security from insolvency and be a massive saving for Medicare (as the Obese/Smokers won't ever enter Medicare, but will pay tons into it). Single payer would likely include the current Medicare ages, thus it would still remain cheaper to cover an Obese/Smoker who dies at 60 than a completely healthy person that dies at 80.
The reality is that people hate the Obese/Smokers due to biases, not costs. Or because they think it is immoral/a character flaw to allow oneself to die early. There's no actual economic argument to be made that Obesity/Smoking is bad for society, they're net contributors by every major metric (particularly healthcare, retirement contributions, and taxes).
There's been multiple studies drawing the same conclusion[1][2][3]. But most won't look at the data, and ignore the "long tail" of healthy individuals that is so expensive while talking about the "short tail" expense of the obese or smokers.
[0] http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccost...
[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
[2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506#t=a...
Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”
Making the cost impact all the more troubling is the fact that, unlike smokers, obese people tend to live almost as long as those who keep their weight under control. "Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare" trillions of dollars", said Duke's Eric Finkelstein. "But mortality isn't that much higher among the obese."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now...
Forbes:
Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”
Making the cost impact all the more troubling is the fact that, unlike smokers, obese people tend to live almost as long as those who keep their weight under control. "Smokers die early enough that they save Social Security, private pensions, and Medicare" trillions of dollars", said Duke's Eric Finkelstein. "But mortality isn't that much higher among the obese."
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So in other words we're looking and year over year cost increases that are significant. A BMI of 30–35 kg/m2 reduces life expectancy by two to four years [wikipedia].
Two to four years is nothing especially when you have all these extra yearly costs to make up. Yes, the very obese can lose 6-10 years of life, but they're rare. 30-35 is the common range. Not to mention advances in stent technology and advances in heart drugs means that a obese person today is going to have a very good chance at a long lifespan. We may be able to eliminate that 2-4 shortage sooner than later.
Medicare is a public insurance scheme in the US, not private.
> None of your other cites calculate anything have to do with obesity costs in healthcare.
So you're dismissing one study ("Does Preventing Obesity Lead to Reduced Health-Care Costs?") because it uses data from the UK and ignoring the other completely ("Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure") why? Both are expressly about calculating costs in healthcare.
You aren't even arguing against their methodology or conclusions, just dismissing their mere existence.
> I'm sorry but you sound like a typical fat acceptance advocate trying to skirt the issue.
Bring up facts backed by studies is "skirting the issue?" What exactly does addressing the issue head on look like?
I am following the science where it leads. You can paint that as an ideology but I'd suggest dismissing studies you don't like the conclusion of is more ideological than presenting them as is. The key difference is that my views can be changed with more data, seems like your views have already been made up prior to today and you'll dismiss counter-evidence at a hand wave.
Not to mention the false claim you make compared obese people to smokers. Smokers do die young, obese do not. Again, a 2 year lifespace difference is not a cost savings when you're looking at several thousands per year extra healthcare spending for an obese person.
I'm sorry but your biased fat acceptance "facts" are false. I wish you would own up them, accept the data in the forbes article instead of attacking me in this passive aggressive fashion.
We seem to have much the same problems as the US WRT regulation of harmful recreational foods.
I am however completely and 100% fine with paying a higher i.e. health insurance premium due to my soda drinking habit (or any other habit that causes my health risk to be higher).
I'm just not a big fan of 'sin taxes' -- though I could be persuaded if they were actually put to use in the same way that the health insurance/risk concept would be; I'm just not convinced that's actually what would happen in the long or short term.
After all, someone who drinks soda and does a lot of exercise or hard work might not impose any cost on the health system - and someone who eats a lot of bacon or home-baked cakes might get obese without drinking any soda.
As for the tax, it doesn't need to be applied at the point of sale, but can be further back in the chain.
I do love me some regular Dr. Pepper, but it's so bad for me I rarely drink it any more. (Admission: I still drink diet soda. I had to acquire the taste.)
I absolutely reject the notion that tax on soda or other potentially-addictive substances are a punishment of the consumer for poor moral choices. Making sugar expensive is simply an effective strategy to lower consumption by shifting the equilibrium point for consumer purchases.
We have a family friend that's disabled, she's an adult but only able to read around a 4th grade level. She's seen her grandmother die of diabetes, her mom has it too and the friend herself is fat. But notwithstanding the healthy food we give her when she visits or stays with us, and no matter how many times we remind her about how to choose between different kinds of food, if she goes into a store on her own and has money she's more likely than not to buy 2 quart bottles of soda and drink one of them immediately.
It's really hard for some people, especially kids, to resist getting jacked up on sugar. The younger they do so the more likely they are to develop lifelong eating habits that are going to give them painful and expensive medical problems and send them into an early grave. There's no moral component involved at the consumption end for me because many people are just not smart enough to carry around the idea of healthy eating and to choose it over the marketing signals that surround them. The younger they get exposed to an addictive substance, the more difficulty they're likely to have resisting the temptation to consume it.
I am utterly indifferent to the economic situation of shareholders in the crap food industry. They don't have a right to make money out of people; it's usually the suppliers who make the moral argument about consumers needing to make healthy choices and tax being a horrible punishment. That's just an attempt to shift the entire burden of responsibility onto consumers at the same time that the suppliers are spending a fortune on marketing to kids. Frankly most of the drug dealers I've met in my life had more of a moral center than the professional lobbying and marketing people I've known.
Somehow that reminds me of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
Also, have you noticed that many kids like soda but have poorly-developed reasoning skills because they're not finished growing? I object to people exploiting that to make money while avoiding the taxes to pay for the predictable social costs.
And whether you reject the notion the fact of the matter is that it is still going to punish every responsible person with a new tax that will go into the general government coffers.
I would say the same thing about children: they are the parents responsibility.
I know you would, and I think your reasoning is foolish. Many parents are clearly not responsible, either from indifference or ignorance. I am fine with government acting in loco parentis in a very narrow way (even for adults) because the negative health outcomes and their associated costs are predictable and lowering those costs has demonstrable overall utility. Available information shows this policy to function better than waiting for people to get a responsibility transplant and just shrugging our shoulders about kids who end up suffering because of their parents' poor guardianship.
How are you being 'punished' if your soda costs $0.50 more? When I smoked cigarettes I didn't feel punished by their continually-rising cost. I'd rather pay for something with a large negative externality at the point of purchase than in the form of income tax, since it's likely to be more efficient. The Coase theorem tells us that aside from transactional friction, it is no more expensive to pay up front than later, and in its role of insurer of last resort the public interest is best served by minimizing the predictable scope of the problem.
The fact that revenue ends up in the general fund is irrelevant; the objective is to reduce consumption, and soda taxes have been demonstrated to be effective in that goal. In case you're not familiar with the geography, Berkeley and San Francisco are only about 20 minutes apart by subway and travel between them for work or leisure is very common.
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.3...
The answer is of course no to both... so people are being taxed because others are being infringed, but the taxes don't serve those infringed.
Also, diet soda has its' own issues... and more fat people are drinking diet soda than regular.
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edit: Also, we don't need to tax soda, just stop subsidizing farming...
I agree that not subsidizing sugar production would be a much better step to take here.
Would you mind cutting out that "this is why people hate liberals" nonsense? It's incredibly obnoxious.
I agree with the 'sin tax' because it places it closer to the source. There are many, many external variables that will affect the individual before it affects health insurance.
If "soda" is "bad", then tax soda. Don't attempt to figure out the cost once it is so far removed from the situation (i.e. don't attempt to measure the flapping of butterfly wings in a hurricane)
But if you're going to make that assumption, just ban soda, since you no longer recognize any upsides to it.
However what do they then consume? A switch from diet cola to juice would be bad from a sugar perspective and a switch to milk would be bad from a caloric perspective. Sparkling water is better from both perspectives but it is worse for your teeth than regular water [2] plain tea seems mixed [3] but realistically would you expect most people to switch to plain tea or tea with tons of sugar?
[1]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X15... [2]: http://www.today.com/health/sparkling-water-bad-your-teeth-d... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweete...
I would have thought most big soda manufacturers sell both, and even if you only sold non-diet soda, you think it would be easier to pivot to diet soda than push for legislation to raise it's price.
Weirdly, diet Tropical Tango tastes better to me than the sugared version, possibly because its flavourings are so artificial already that the artificial sweetener fits better ... or possibly just because I'm weird.
[EDIT] I should add that I'd be surprised if the sugared variants typically have no difference to the HFCS sort other than subbing out the sweetener, so that's another wrinkle to attempting straight comparisons of sugar vs. HFCS
Your body uses some pretty basic heuristics in order to determine one, that you're full, and two that you're getting a sufficient caloric intake. Introducing high-volume, low-calorie foods into your diet isn't necessarily a problem, but your body will quickly determine that you need more volume to reach its caloric needs. Especially if you use diet soda / lite snacks to satisfy hunger. So when you mix 'diet' foodstuffs with normal food you will more than likely overeat on the high calorie foods leading to more weight gain.
This is where philosophy for the other dieting extreme comes from. If you normally eat extremely high-calorie/low-volume foods to satisfy hunger and put up with a grumbly stomach for a while you will adjust the other direction and under-eat on normal calorie foods, ideally leading to weight loss.
Sources? This is something I spent a bit of time looking into and the consensus at the time was there was no strong consensus.
I reckon with properly blinded tests many people couldn't tell the difference between 7up and coke if you served it cold enough.
That seems like a very tiny amount compared to the profits we are looking at. I mean Let us say if you are focusing on 10 major US cities + DC then it is merely $6M per city. Isn't that too tiny an amount to get anything done ?
If the local media doesn't make a stink of it, you'll get away with it, too.
In the US most legislation is already written by the lobbyists themselves.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-truth...
2. I was just listening to a Stuff you should know on artificial sweeteners, and it seems that there's some downsides to diet sodas as well. One example was that the non-calorie sweetener reduced the body/brain's relation between sweetness and calories. This causes the body not to recognize other sweet things (full sugar drinks/candy, carbs, etc) as caloric.
$10 million/year fighting against soda taxes represents 0.01% of their revenue. I'd be surprised if they were only spending $10m/year.
2) Those figures are worldwide, not just for Mexico.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised it's not Coke and Pepsi directly behind the spying, but FEMSA and other bottlers. After all, why would Coke risk its huge brand when the bottlers, who have as much as stake, are Mexican, and are thus better to "influence things over there"