Bureaucrats are planning to seize control of the healthcare industry and finance the power grab by taxing lifestyles.

The Senate Finance Committee is considering raising taxes on alcohol and imposing a new levy on soda and other naturally sweetened drinks to help pay for overhauling health care. The committee calls them "lifestyle tax proposals," saying the levies would slow sales of unhealthy products that contribute to rising medical costs. …

Besides alcohol, drinks with sugar, high fructose corn syrup and similar sweeteners would be targeted, though diet drinks with artificial sweeteners would not. Other industries also are on alert, worried that the idea of "lifestyle taxes" could spread to other products deemed unhealthy.

Imposing socialized medicine is expected to cost at least $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, so the lifestyle taxes will have to spread far and wide to pay the bills. Not even liberals will like the consequences. How about a homosexual depravity tax, since it's hard to imagine a lifestyle more likely to produce astronomical medical bills?

Even if there could ever be a good time to nationalize healthcare, this definitely wouldn't be it. The tax hikes required would be crippling even in the best of economic times. Add to this the cap and trade lunacy, and our only hope is that grownups will take control of the government soon and undo the Hopey Change before it results in a depression.

On a tip from Berkley. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.