It's not as if the US doesn't end up paying for treating people's illnesses, we just let the disease progress until it gets so bad it becomes a medical emergency. By law hospitals must treat anybody who comes in a medical emergency. Medicaid and Medicare also pay for diabetes and dialysis which are in part growing problems due to the huge rates of soda consumption. Our broken system treats people too late, hospitals pass the cost on to insurance companies and we pay much more for healthcare coverage medical bills because of it. Instead of a medical delivery system we have a misery delivery system. But that's tangential to the initiative in CA.
People who are addicted and not motivated to change will always find a way to get their drugs. This bill doesn't ban sodas, it places a 25 cent tax on it.
The posts in this thread talk as if Cali is going to ban them. It's just making the cost higher. There are plenty of studies that show by doing so people buy less sodas, which is the intent of the tax. I'm not saying I'd vote for the bill. I'm just saying there is a lot of misinformation about it and pushing back on the rhetoric that chumps are parroting from the propaganda mill that Coke and Pepsi are running. I hate that shit.
