Rising worker’s compensation and health care cost is prompting San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley to put a ban on hiring smokers.
“If your lifestyle contributes to a disability, I’m sorry about that. But I don’t think the taxpayers should pay.” said Horsley.
Since smoking is known to cause numerous health problems, Horsley said the decision to not hire smokers is an economical move that could save the county a lot of money in workers’ compensation costs each year.
The idea came to him after the Sheriff’s Department had to settle a $90,000 workers’ compensation claim with a retired employee. The retiree developed lung cancer…..
That should have read: addiction. I'm not sure "addition" has an moral implications . . .
"(?) No you have it wrong. "25%" are the percentage of people who died last year from chronic disease related to smoking :-)"
So you don't acknowledge that the "rate of deaths attributed to smoking" mirrors the actual rate of the population that smokes. I know you can't acknowledge it because then the fallacy in the numbers might actually have to be acknowledged.
"LOL - yeah it's called medicare and medicaid, not to mentioned all the uninsured that county and VA hospitals take care off. If everyone, smoker or not, were paying their medical bills you might have a point, but they're not, so you don't. :-)"
Your claim was not that the medicare spending was $75 Billion on medicare and medicade. It was that the total health care costs to our country was $75 Billion. If you want to shift the discussion to medicare and medicade, how much of the total projected budget of $250 Billion for medicare is a direct cost attributed to smoking?
http://www.personalmd.com/news/n1005051356.shtml Key paragraph:
Smoking cost Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, $17 billion in 1997; and the burden to all other public and private programs totaled almost $52 billion, according to study results published in the current issue of Health Care Financing Review.
So, by your contention, as the smoking rate has decreased, the health care cost increased. In addition, if your number could be proven, actual costs attributed to federal recipiants of aid would be $17B of your $75B. That means that $58B was being paid directly by the individual.
"LOL - Oooops cannot counter this one, so it must be "bogus" :-)"
How in the world would you measure a loss in productivity attributed to smoking then assign a cost to it. You can't measure it and you can't correlate it with a cost. It is a fabricated number. Consider the productivity gains over the years, how do we gain in productivity while at the same time finding a loss in productivity of $80B?
"None of the above - objective medical science and risk/cost analysis have shown that it is completely stupid for the government to continue to pay for people who are willfully and selfishly self-destructive."
Yep, but they are not refusing to fund the results of behaviour. They are confiscating funds from persons that engage in behaviours they deem "self destructive". As that list of behaviour grows, the revenues to the government grows. That directly translates into fascism. The government is making personal choices for its citizen's behaviour according to what a certain group of people deem appropriate. The list will continue to expand and the groudwork has been laid.
"Smoking is the single biggest self-controlable(?) contributing factor to chronic dz - the same diseases that cost the most amount of money to care for and treat."
And when that problem is solved, the new "single biggest self controlable contributing factor" will be targeted by the government. See the new "crisis" of obesity and see the government starting to take up the cause. Soon efforts to control our diets will be commonplace. Fascism, pure and simple.
"A lot has happened since '95"
Yep, the rate of the population that smokes has declined and the tax rates on tobacco has increased. The numbers presented by the author of the article would be more advantagous to my argument today.
I did some calculations. If the positive effect of $0.83 per pack were to remain constant (it is higher today) the actual impact would be a positive effect of $16.66B in other words our country benefits in an amout equal to 0.76% of the federal budget. Of course it is higher today.
Adult Population 220 Million x smoking rate 25% = 55M smokers.
55M x 1 pack per day x $0.83 = $4.565 Million per day
4.565 x 365 days per year = $16.66 Billion per year
16.66 / Fed budget $2.2Trillion = 0.76%