The ‘Tanning Tax’ Is A Public Health Success Story

Among the lesser known provisions in the now-rejected Republican House and Senate health care bills was a plan to eliminate an excise tax on tanning bed use. Tanning first became fashionable when Coco Chanel popularized the practice in the 1920s, making lounging outside in the sun a symbol of leisure, relaxation, and health. In the late 1970s, pioneering businesses began to offer ultraviolet (UV) radiation beds as a shortcut to fashionable tanned skin; by the 1990s, indoor UV tanning services were ubiquitous staples of the American beauty industry. Despite its popularity, research has shown that exposure to UV radiation is the primary environmental cause of skin cancer and tanning beds are “the main source of deliberate exposure to artificial UV radiation.” Melanoma risk is particularly high among individuals who use tanning beds for the first time before age 35. The practice remains most common with female college students in the United States, with more than 50 percent reporting having used indoor tanning beds. Furthermore, despite their higher risk for melanoma, tanning companies aggressively target this demographic through the use of tailored marketing and advertising techniques. Both the House and Senate health care bills would have repealed the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “tanning tax,” a 10 percent consumer-paid tax on non-medical, UV light indoor tanning services. When the tax was enacted in 2010, the non-partisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxatio...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Public Health tanning tax Source Type: blogs