Really, I hate to call names, but I have to wonder about the mental stability of those who are occupying Senate seats and trying to reform the nation’s healthcare.

One of the wunderkind had a brilliant idea of taxing people undergoing cosmetic surgery and procedures in order to “pay” for healthcare reform. Not that these people are already paying for these services out of pocket, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand. But I suppose it was the idea that only rich folks get their faces tightened and tweaked, so why not milk them a little more.

Well that didn’t go over well with the plastic surgeons, derms, and others who make money from this. And healthcare reform needs the support of the medical community, so they dropped the “Botax.” Next victim–tanning salons.

Now, we have elected officials, who supposedly have some degree of intelligence, who believe that they are going to solve the money problem by taxing tanning salons. And here’s where the eyes roll round and round and round.

If the bill is passed in its current form, a 10-percent tax would be placed on individuals buying tanning services. Who are paying for these services out of pocket already. But they think that taxing tanning salons are going to raise $2.7 billion over 10 years. Are they totally daft? First, why should someone using a tanning salon, paying out of pocket, be taxed for it?

Second, unlike cosmetic surgery, which can be quite expensive, tanning salons are quite cheap. A session in a tanning bed cost about $10 or $20 dollars. Unless someone is a really heavy duty user, it isn’t gong to add up to much. And with the tax, people may just use it less often. But really, getting a dollar or two here and there is just not going to raise a lot of money.

So here’s a brain twister for them. If they want to raise money and improve health at the same time, slap a tax on McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Coke, Pepsi, candy bars, sugary breakfast cereals, pesticides, and all foods that you need an organic chemistry textbook to decipher the ingredients with. Tax commercial agriculture, tax the commercial beef/chicken industry (put a hefty tax on the hormones and antibiotics that they feed to the animals), etc.

Tax all the unhealthy stuff. This way, people can pay in advance for their future diabetes and heart disease care! Or their future cancer.

But these are powerful industries, so they get treated with gentle loving care. Preventing disease in the first place is the single most important thing that real reform needs to look at, but unfortunately, politicians will be politicians.

Anyway, I am so fed up with this. What we need is real reform of the insurance industry, and then real measures to lower healthcare costs. But that would mean stepping on a lot of toes, so no one wants to go there.