In reply to Dr.S at work:
> Yep, and that makes tons of sense, my innured inclinication is to get the state to do things like health care and fund that from general taxation - I'd be fascinated to see any larger scale health care systems that rely more on charities and see how they compare.
I could envision a more mixed/balanced approach combining reduced state funding with charitable funding and a bit more of the individual paying for the treatment they receive depending on the nature of the treatment and the availability of charitable funding.
Perhaps to use climbing as an example, if I injured myself doing a bold trad route then perhaps I should incur 75% of the cost myself (being as this was a totally optional endeavor with known risks) while 25% is covered by the taxation pot. Maybe if there was a climbing charity or other type of organization/body that was encouraging climbing they could chip in a percentage to reduce my costs to the degree that they could. I think that encourages a tighter knit community, more personal responsibility and avoids the dread total privatization that most in this country are fearful of.
Dietary/sedentary lifestyle obesity would incur a larger cost to recipient and encourage better lifestyle choices vs blanket sugar taxes which negatively impacts everyone.
Genetic/hereditary cancer would be completely covered by tax and charity vs cancer caused by smoking 40 a day or alcohol abuse, which would be almost all user incurred, unless a charity wants to help out.
I do think having everything health related covered by tax causes quite a lot of unintended negative public health impacts. Changing this frees people to be a bit more autonomous in their decision making; reducing/eliminating blanket, low resolution, policies.
Also note, less tax means people have more spare income to actually consider giving to charity, buying more climbing gear, which funds those businesses to innovate and make better safety gear going forward etc. This seems like a better positive feedback loop than always upping taxes to me.
Post edited at 09:13