Diane Ellis, Ed.: Making Parents Pay for Their Children's Obesity

According to some reports, 190 million Americans (that's two-thirds of the population) are either overweight or obese. Among children, one in three is overweight or obese, marking a tripling of the rate of childhood obesity over the last thirty years.

Illinois state Senator Shane Cultra (a Republican, for shame!) thinks he's come up with a solution to childhood obesity in his state:

An Illinois lawmaker says parents who have obese children should lose their state tax deduction.

"It's the parents' responsibility that have obese kids," said state Sen. Shane Cultra, R-Onarga. "Take the tax deduction away for parents that have obese kids."

My immediate visceral reaction is one of disgust.  I'd agree that it's a parent's responsibility to help their child maintain a healthy weight, but tying this responsibility to the tax code seems perverse.  The only way one might justify such a scheme is if the case could be made that obesity truly is a public health crisis.  And on this topic, I refer to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Hoover fellow and professor at Stanford Medical School, who argues that while obesity is a private health affliction that many of us face, it's no public health crisis because "most of the costs from poor diet and lack of exercise are paid by the obese themselves."

Public health crisis aside, parents who allow their children to overeat to the point of obesity are putting their children at great risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, elevated blood cholesterol, and a host of adverse psychological effects.  Is there room here for any type of government intervention, or is childhood obesity simply collateral damage of living in a free society?