David Leonhardt makes a compelling case for the soda tax in the New York Times today, noting that as the price of sugary drinks has fallen relative to the price of healthy foods, consumption of the bad-for-you soda skyrocketed. Indeed, the inflation-adjusted price of fruits and vegetables rose 17% between 1997 and 2003, while the price of Coca-Cola fell by an astonishing 34.89%. All this has resulted in higher obesity rates and increasing health care costs:

Sugar-sweetened beverages …may be the single largest driver of the obesity epidemic. A recent meta-analysis found that the intake of sugared beverages is associated with increased body weight, poor nutrition, and displacement of more healthful beverages; increasing consumption increases risk for obesity and diabetes; the strongest effects are seen in studies with the best methods (e.g., longitudinal and interventional vs. correlational studies); and interventional studies show that reduced intake of soft drinks improves health. Studies that do not support a relationship between consumption of sugared beverages and health outcomes tend to be conducted by authors supported by the beverage industry.

As price of soda has fallen:

Consumption of soda has increased:

The beverage industry is busy sponsoring its own contradictory studies and pushing the meme that a tax on soda is by nature regressive (the industry spent at least $18 million to keep a tax out of federal health reform and is now spending more in the states), an argument which only makes sense if you ignore or discount the fact that obesity disproportionately affects the poor and that taxing soda would help reduce consumption (if it’s high enough), improve health outcomes among this population, and raise much-need revenue. As Leonhardt observes, “Someday, we will probably look back on our gallon-a-week soda habit the way we now look back on allowing children to ride without seat belts or listening to doctors who endorsed Camel cigarettes. We will wonder what we were thinking.”

Thirty-three states already levy a sales tax on soda (39 states levy a tax on soda in vending machines) and the President’s White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity makes a relatively weak pitch for the idea. Recommendation 4.9 suggests that policy makers should merely “analyze the effect of state and local sales tax on less healthy, energy-dense foods.”

Today’s Progress Report has more on the Task Force and the obesity debate.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) took to the Senate floor today to continue the GOP’s ‘second opinion’ campaign against the new health care law and Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). During a rather meandering speech about health care rationing, Roberts tried to connect Berwick to the British health care system and imply that the nominee supports death panels:

ROBERTS: What did he [Berwick] mean when hesaid that equity is a necessary component of quality? Does that mean that high-quality care should not be available unless it is available to all? This certainly seems to square with the United Kingdom’s practice of denying or delaying access to the latest break though drugs or technologies because of its high cost…Now I know that “socialized medicine and “death panels” have become loaded terms. I understand that. But if that is what you are for, you should just say so. Don’t be afraid to have this discussion. Dr. Berwick certainly hasn’t been shy about his views in the past.

Watch a compilation:

Roberts also criticized Berwick for supporting universal health care, noting that Berwick’s sentiment may “sound very nice” and “very realistic.” “The reality is, that declaring health care a human right necessarily places one above others, suppressing the rights of others in favor of another government favored group….what you’re essentially saying is that some people have a right to somebody else’s property, whether that be taxable income or doctor’s services or their health care,” he said. Health care “cannot be properly described as a right without egregious government coercion and income redistribution and patient care consequences.”

Despite Roberts’ fear mongering and use of ‘loaded terms’ like ‘rationing,’ the non-GOP talking point reality is that “Medicare makes decisions on coverage all the time.” As Bush appointee Thomas Scully, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from 2001-2003, told me last year, “I made decisions on coverage all the time… You got to do it the right way” by relying on research about the effectiveness of certain drugs. There is simply no way around it. However, since the government spends about $700 billion a year on treatments that don’t improve health care outcomes, the first order of business is to identify this waste and redistribute it to other parts of the health system.