Sunday, February 19, 2017
Really dumb idea
This has to be the dumbest health policy idea since Romneycare.
Precisely because it is so hard to regulate and prevent the spread of these pseudo-scientific non-treatments, we should be cracking down on one of their lucrative revenue streams by ending the tax-free status of workplace benefits plans that cover them. People should, at the very least, have to pay tax on pseudo-scientific treatments covered by their benefits plans.Basic problem: The usual definition of "pseudoscientific" is totally independent of actual science. It's purely a matter of fashion and status and grants. Electrotherapy (magnetic fields or passing current through the body) was normal and mainstream from 1840 to 1920, then pseudoscientific quackery from 1920 through 1980, now normal and mainstream again. Psychiatry has been totally and definitively disproved from the start, but it continues to be "scientific" because the Tribe owns it. Diet advice switches back and forth at a dizzying pace. A doctor who tells you to avoid fat is "scientific" today, "pseudo" tomorrow, "scientific" the next day. What happens if you tax a bad treatment for a while, then "learn" that the same treatment is now good and necessary? Do you refund the taxes from the bad time? Conversely, do you retroactively tax a treatment that has switched from necessity to quackery?
Labels: Loughnerian Logic
¶ 2:48 AM
