surprised they aren't going after the massage or spa people...

OFFTOPIC (Sorry, I gotta)—

Is anyone else noticing that as they type a long line of text in a blog comment, the last few letters go off the side of the box and are invisible before the line automatically breaks? This only started a week or two ago, and there haven't and software changes on this end.

PS– H Reid stinx.

The tax is the least of the tanning industry's worries.

Look for a government commission to outlaw tanning salons as being too expensive to the "health system". Reason: UV radiation causes cancer. Cancer is expensive to treat.

It may be harder to forbid tanning altogether. (Get off that beach right now!)

We will soon be peasants responsible to the government. We will need to be healthy to keep production and taxes high. Then, when our health costs exceed our productivity, we can enjoy a quiet rest in a hospice.

Begging for Medical Care

The bureaucracy sees you as a cost, especially if you have already paid. All people and organizations seek income and avoid costs. Socialized or centralized healthcare is paid up-front and delivers services after the fact. How hard will a system work to earn the money that they have already been paid? This is something that everyone can understand in his gut. A customer is lost without competition for his dollar.

When you go to an emergency room under socialized medicine, you are a pure cost. Your treatment may be directed by caring people of good will, but the institution is treating you only to raise its statistics, within the budget set at the annual (say) Medical Cost Process Review.

Another thought. What would the food be like at a socialized "free" gourmet restaurant run by the government? Would they even wipe the tables? Of course, tipping is forbidden, and please eat everything on your plate.

Typical: throw random stuff into a bill. Supposedly about health care, they add new regulations on tanning studios.

What is missing in the USA is the possibility of a citizens' referendum, and topic one of such a referendum ought to be restrictions on the way Congress passes legislation. Namely: bills ought to concern themselves with a single topic. No weird digressions, earmarks, etc.

Of course, it is in a sense related. As Amy said above: let's find another area of business too small to defend itself, and screw it out of some tax revenue. After all, someone has to pay for this monstrosity...

What is missing in the USA is the possibility of a citizens' referendum

As someone who lives in a state with a referendum process, I have to say that this is a terrible idea. Californians pass all kinds of moronic ballot measures because people lack the time and energy to think through the consequences. There's a reason the U.S. is a republic.

"The bureaucracy sees you as a cost, especially if you have already paid. All people and organizations seek income and avoid costs. Socialized or centralized healthcare is paid up-front and delivers services after the fact. How hard will a system work to earn the money that they have already been paid?"

Andrew, it's actually even worse than that. Don't forget that the people you're talking about think that tax revenue comes from the tax fairy; the citizens have nothing to do with it. By and large, they see the average American citizen as a pure cost item from birth to death -- we eat too much, we pollute, we exhale CO2, we're ungovernable and we don't do as we're told nearly often enough. We are at best a nuisance, and at worst, we're destroying the planet. Fact is, as the elites see it, the world would be better off if there were a whole lot fewer of us.