Tanning Coffins

As we all know, President Obama recently signed the Health Care Bill into law. A major bill of over 2,000 pages…major Bill in scope and major Bill in cost. To pay for health care reform Americans will have to cough up 940 billion dollars. The pricey sum is turning a few of us a sickly green wondering, “Whose hide is it gonna come from?”


One brilliant bulb idea already incorporated into the bill is to tax the tanning industry…to impose a 10% tax on tanning salon customers. They say it will generate 2.7 billion dollars over 10 years. I say, "why not?" The bucks have to come out of someone’s hide…even the tanned and leathered. But this has got the tanning industry heated up.

Some people are outraged and feel unjustly targeted with the tanning tax…saying that it could hurt business. But can it really do any more damage than UV light from tanning beds? “Indoor tanning, before the age of 35, is linked to a 75% increase in the risk of melanoma. The U.S. currently spends about $1.8 billion on treating skin cancers each year and $300 million on melanoma alone.” (I love Google for stats to make my point.) Wouldn’t fewer tanning bed customers help to reduce the future costs of treating skin cancers?

The average customer pays between 15 and 20 dollars per visit of 200 -400 nanometers of UV light. Hey mon, I say it’s still cheaper than getting on a plane to Cabo. Quit complaining mon. You’ve made your tanning bed, now lie in it…if you must.

I’ve actually been in a tanning coffin…many years ago before taking a vacation. Okay, I know it is called a ‘tanning bed’, but when the lid was closed….I couldn’t help thinking I was being permanently laid to rest. I don’t think a ‘bed’ accurately describes the look. My bed doesn’t have a lid on it…does yours? But I do understand that a Tanning Salon business advertising “Tanning coffins”…might find their business bottom line buried with no light in sight.

Anywho………….

The original Health Care Bill also included a tax on Botox injections…cutely referred to as “The Botax.” But the tax on Botox got blocked…in the same way Botox blocks any emotion from your face. Probably half of the Senators were unhappy with adding a Botox tax…but you would have never known by their expression.

The upside of the tanning tax is that …the new 10% tax will NOT apply to spray-on tans…OR sunless tanning lotions………the downside of the tax is that…we are now destined to see a lot more orange people walking around.