EVEN ONE OF MY DOCTORS is fooled into thinking I am smarter than I am!

So, I headed out to a "think tank" type weekly forum he sponsors. The challenge: Come with a major issue and offer your solution.

Ummmm.....having an ego (and stomach) larger than the Goodyear Blimp, I have toyed for a few years with the idea of a tax on (non-Pig) lipstick, foot pwder, vitamins, Tiger Balm, and power "drinks"--say 1% of sales to fund really good health care, or supplemental premiums for people.

Pfizer, Nestle's, Estee Lauder, J&J would embrace the idea because IRS could give them back a 1% tax rebate for administering the plan, and their own corporate health costs and those of their employees will go down.

Then, as when you awake from a really sexy dream, reality set in.

Here is what I am presenting to the doc and his gurus:

T H E S I S : ??? PROVE: IN A NATION OF HUGE NON-ESSENTIAL, DISCRETIONARY PURCHASE OF BEAUTY, HEALTH, WEIGHT LOSS, COSMETIC, DIETARY SUPPLEMENT, AND OTHER NON-Rx SELF-CARE PRODUCTS, A MODEST 1 % ‘ASSESSMENT' OR ‘SURCHARGE' WILL FUND QUALITY AND AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE FOR MOST AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS.

Fact: $ 5.6 Billion will be spent on self-care, non essentially personal "natural"

Beauty and grooming products, and even in recession the sales are booming. Traditional non-organic, non "natural" companies are deep in this game:

Estee Lauder, Body Shop, Johnson & Johnson, etc

Fact: FROM A NUMBER OF SOURCES the estimated 2008 Global sales of non-organic non-medically essential "supplements" and health aids is $60 Billion.

THESIS: ??? PROVE: IN A NATION OF HUGE NON-ESSENTIAL, DISCRETIONARY PURCHASE OF BEAUTY, HEALTH, WEIGHT LOSS, COSMETIC, DIETARY SUPPLEMENT, AND OTHER NON-Rx SELF-CARE PRODUCTS, A MODEST 1 % ‘ASSESSMENT' OR ‘SURCHARGE' WILL FUND QUALITY AND AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE FOR MOST AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS.

Fact: $ 5.6 Billion will be spent on self-care, non essentially personal "natural"

Beauty and grooming products, and even in recession the sales are booming. Traditional non-organic, non "natural" companies are deep in this game:

Estee Lauder, Body Shop, Johnson & Johnson, etc

Fact: FROM A NUMBER OF SOURCES the estimated 2008 Global sales of non-organic non-medically essential "supplements" and health aids is $60 Billion.

Fact: Conservatively add in the "health and nutritional drinks" and other diet and energy drinks and products and we'll add another projected $23 billion for this year.

Biased but given: EVEN WITHOUT PET GROOMING AND NON PRESCRIPTION PET HEALTH PRODUCTS, various balms and ointments, and teeth brighteners, let's just take the pool of approximately $90 Billion in sales from companies domiciled in the USA. Obviously add non-USA based firms such as Nestlé, Unilever, Astra-Zeneca etc and the numbers are much larger. Add the over the counter division of other USA giants such as Pfizer, Schering etc and we would have a much larger working number...but this is a hypothetical anyway.

2000 US CENSUS REPORTS: 111 MILLION OCCUPIED HOUSING UNITS.

LET'S BE GENEROUS AND SINGLE, MARRIED, OTHER, WHATEVER, LET'S SAY THERE ARE 120 MILLION HOUSEHOLDS IN THE USA.

Non-insured and under-insured. Numbers are all over the place. Let's use a high range average of 35 million uninsured and a total of 49 million "Americans" un- or under-insured. We'll ballpark average 3 humanoids per household and even at the rather high end say that of the 120 "households", probably 50mm/3 more or less or

17 million of the 120 million households or about 15% of every house, apartment, farm, ranch, townhouse, or cardboard homeless boxes have virtually no health care safety net.

HARD SOLUTIONS: an initial 1% assessment (in American you can't call anything a tax) on just the $90 B in discretionary lotions and potions, results in a targeted health care reserve of $ 9 billion in one year. For reasons stated above the numbers will be much larger.

But, let's run the numbers. The 1 per cent personal non discretionary health care surcharge results in $75 for every single household in America.

Let's say my numbers are ridiculously low and when you include every mouthwash, soap, toothpaste, foot powder, underarm deodorant, aspirin, hairbrush, hairdryer, humidifier, and lip balm manufactured in America, the real USA non-prescription personal self-care product market is TEN TIMES larger. RESULT: a $750 annual grant per USA Household for quality, comprehensive healthcare.

In many households either employer paid, employer assisted, employer discounted (you get a discount rate but you pay your own premium), or 100% consumer paid, $750 per month buys only an ‘average' family plan with rather high co-pays and sometimes huge deductibles and exclusions for pre-existing conditions. THIS AMOUNT OFTEN BUYS ONLY A LAME ‘CATASTROPHIC' DE FACTO PLAN WHICH DOES LITTLE TO HELP WHEN JOHNNY BREAKS HIS COLLAR BONE AT FOOTBALL PRACTICE.

Paradigm flaw: HAD THE NUMBERS WORKED...the incentive for Pfizer et al to embrace the plan would have been a concomitant 1% Federal Tax credit for the manufacturer, and ironically lower health costs for their own employees and employer-sponsored systems which would be a kind of rebate to them as well.

CONCLUSION: Thinking out of the box with innovative ideas is good. This solution is not good. (1) Any assessment in an election year will be labeled a tax on the poor, and (2) Even at the magnitude of tens of Billions with a "B" in my personal experience the type of available health programs now available cost far more than the assessment could produce. The solutions are somewhere in the systemic issues of service, delivery, and waste elimination, and a proactive prophylactic and preventive approach to health care. The complex solutions are beyond my pay grade and expertise.

Thesis: LIKELY FALSE.