But Do They Earn More than $200,000 a Year?
A new 10% tax on indoor tanning [was] included in the health reform bill signed last week by President Obama… Scheduled to take effect July 1, [this tax] is expected to raise $2.7 billion over 10 years… About 35% of 17-year-old girls use tanning machines, an FDA report says.
Source: USA Today.
17-year-olds earning $200,000 year? Let’s see our our glib president explains this one away?
It’s amazing that so many young people tan. There was a girl that I went to school with that tanned religiously. She looked great when she was 17. (She was even featured on the tanning bed commercial.) It’s been ten years, and now she looks like an old lady. I can’t imagine how much she paid to tan all of those years.
It’s incredible that people pay so much for burnt skin.
I wonder if the people who championed the inclusion of this provision realize that it functions like a tax on ethnicity — falling primarily on people of Northern European decent. People whose ancestors originated further south probably possess skin pigmentation such that they likely don’t feel the need to tan.
Now that I think about it; it’s probably also falls more heavily on young women of Northern European decent. So that makes it a youth tax, a vanity tax, an ethnicity tax and a gender tax. I would be hard pressed to identify a tax that’s more biased.
Tom, don’t you remember the Obama campaign speech where he said no one over the age of 17 will pay any additional taxes?
Devon sez: “that makes it a youth tax, a vanity tax, an ethnicity tax and a gender tax”
Actually, you missed the real reason for the tax, it’s specifically targeted at Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Getting back to reality, use of tanning beds before age 35 increase your melanoma risk by 75 percent. Think of it this was, cigarettes are to lung cancer as tanning beds are to skin cancer.
I’m betting that people with severe Crohn’s disease who might use indoor tanning to stimulate vitamin D production also earn less than $200,000 a year.
Linda sez: “Crohn’s disease who might use indoor tanning to stimulate vitamin D”
I’m betting that if 1 out of 10,000 times a tanning bed is used it’s for Crohn’s disease, it’s alot. How about an exemption to the tax if you have a prescription, or even better, you’re not allowed to be treated for melanoma if you’ve used a tanning bed.
artk,
How about people pay for their own health care so we don’t need to say mother may I to some bureaucrat who has been given the power to overseeing every penny of spending?
Then we could get rid of a ton of regulatory overhead and bend the cost curve in the right direction.
Linda sez: “How about people pay for their own health care”
Because I agree with the position of every civilized country, including the US, that healthcare is a shared obligation of society. I just think that the US should make that sharing less biased in favor of the top 10% of the population.
melanoma is deadly but is is often hard to get that disease too-~*