Skip to main content

Tax wine to pay for health care? Bad idea.

We are just about halfway through the countdown of 101 healthy reasons to drink wine, leading up to the publication of the second edition of Age Gets Better with Wine from the Wine Appreciation Guild August 17. So we pause to consider a topic of current importance, the debate in congress about health care reform and how to pay for it. One of the proposals being floated is the recurring theme of “sin taxes” which are erroneously interpreted as including wine along with all alcoholic beverages. The logic is that since alcohol contributes to health problems and is a discretionary expense, it should make a contribution to health care costs. This is exactly backwards.
Here’s why: Moderate drinkers (and that is most people), especially wine drinkers, actually have lower health care costs because they are healthier. You have seen a partial list of the many health benefits with this countdown, but the government’s own studies confirm it. A 2006 study of drinking habits in Medicare patients revealed that over a 5-year period, moderate wine drinkers (defined as those consuming 6-13 glasses of wine per week) had medical costs averaging about $2000 less than nondrinkers. (Reference available on request.) So by implication, health care expenditures across the board could be decreased substantially by a program of promoting wine drinking, not taxing it. How about a tax on high-fructose corn syrup instead?
"I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens."
-Thomas Jefferson

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Revisiting resveratrol: new findings rekindle anti-aging debate

Just when we thought the bloom was off the rosé for resveratrol, the anti-oxidant polyphenol from red wine with multiple anti-aging properties, along comes new research giving life to the debate. But first a bit of background: As I detailed in my book Age Gets Better with Wine , it is well-documented that wine drinkers live longer and have lower rates of many diseases of aging. Much or the credit for this has been given to resveratrol, though there isn’t nearly enough of it in wine to explain the effects. Nevertheless, I dubbed it the “miracle molecule” and when it was reported to activate a unique life-extension phenomenon via a genetic trigger called SIRT, an industry was born, led by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, quickly acquired by pharma giant Glaxo. The hope was that resveratrol science could lead to compounds enabling people to live up to 150 years and with a good quality of life. But alas, researchers from other labs could not duplicate the results, and clinical studies disa...

Should wine labels make health claims?

Winemakers have been in a debate for some years now with the U.S. Department of Treasury's Alcohol, Tax and Trade Bureau (formerly the ATF, for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms--yeah, that made a lot of sense) about ingredient listing for wines, particularly since the healthful properties of wine polyphenols such as resveratrol have been widely publicised. A couple of years back, an Oregon pinot noir producer gained approval for a fairly benign claim: "Pinot noir develops a natural defense against botrytis (mold) in our moist, cool climate - the antioxidant resveratrol." Since resveratrol is indeed produced in the skins of grapes subjected to certain environmental stresses such as mold, and Oregon's climate is certifiably moist, it seems a fairly harmless claim. However, the feds simultaneously disallowed placing the same wording on another vintage from the same producer, citing concern about making therapeutic claims on labels or creating "misleading" associa...