Sugar is leaving a heavy carbon footprint in human cells. How about applying cap-and-trade rules to companies that are shoveling sweeteners?

We saw an ad on the TV this morning warning about a tax on soda pop. What was that? Then we turn to the New York Times, which carried an article about a proposed tax on sugary soft drinks. The one cent an ounce levy some favor would not only raise money for health care (nearly $15 billion a year), it could also reduce some of the excess weight too many Americans are lugging around. The soda industry is aghast at the idea and so the companies are running advertisements warning Washington, D.C. to stay away from our Big Gulps.

The tax would apply to soft drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks — anything with sugar or corn syrup. (Diet drinks would be exempt.) The proposal follows a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine released this week finding that a beverage tax would lower consumption of sugary drinks enough to lead to a small weight loss among many sugar-guzzling Americans. Under the one cent an ounce proposal, a 12-can box of soda selling today for about $3.20 would rise by $1.44.

The Times reports that the "proposed tax faces a formidable hurdle in Congress." No kidding. The head of Coca-Cola called the proposed tax "outrageous." “I have never seen it work where a government tells people what to eat and what to drink,” The Coke CEO said. “It if worked, the Soviet Union would still be around.”

One of the people asked to sit in the President's box during his address to Congress Wednesday night was a rural doctor from Maine. VillageSoup reporter Andrew Benore tells us that Wayne Myers, a doctor and farmer who live in Waldoboro, Maine, was called September 8 about attending the speech.  Myers had participated in one of the White House's "listening sessions" on rural issues. Myers listened to the speech and then, afterward, met President Obama. (Myers is in top right in photo above.)

"I felt all along Obama should be more outspoken and aggressive about what he was going to insist on rather than waiting for Congress," Myers told Benore. "If we don't get the health care problem under control it will flat wreck the economy," Myers said. "It has gone from eating 3.5 percent of the economy to devouring 17 percent."

Dr. Myers has helped train doctors to work in rural areas and he served for two years as director of the Office of Rural Health Policy in the Clinton administration. Benore reports: "Myers said better access to heath insurance for rural families would help them do what they want to do, such as farming and starting new businesses. 'We would see a boom in small businesses developing in rural areas if people had some way to cover the rural health insurance problem,' Myers said."

The Washington Post reports this morning that the "death panel" myth began in La Crosse. La Crosse isn't officially Yonder — Harrison County has a total population of over 125,000 and is considered a "metro" area — but the town on the western edge of Wisconsin isn't Chicago either. Besides, it's interesting to see how a helpful innovation in a smallish town has come to roil the nation. 

As Alec MacGillis tells us, the Gundersen Lutheran hospital in La Crosse (photo from 1902 above) "has taken the lead in seeking to have Medicare compensate physicians for advising patients on end-of-life planning." This began when a local guy, Bud Hammes, returned with a doctorate in philosophy from Notre Dame to work at the hospital. He found a "troubling pattern" as family members struggled to make medical decisions for sick and dying relatives. The hospital urged people to plan ahead, while everyone was still healthy, and even offered doctors to help people write directives for how they wanted their care to proceed. People found the process helpful and over time 90 percent of the people in town have these legally binding directives. As a result patients at Gundersen spend 13.5 days on average in the hospital during their final two years of life. At UCLA's hospital, it's 31 days. At NYU, 54 days.

Gundersen and a few other hospitals sought to change federal law so that these end of life planning sessions could be paid for by Medicare. Gundersen officials testified before Congress and the provision was placed in a health care reform bill. Then former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned of "death panels" and the circus began. It all started, however, in La Crosse.