Posted on 04/02/2015 9:23:49 PM PDT by grundle
Smoking Worst Health Habit of Those on Medicaid
Thirty-six percent of adults whose primary health insurance source is Medicaid say they smoke -- making them 21 percentage points more likely to report the habit than those with employer-based insurance, and 17 points more likely than the overall adult average. Smoking appears to be the main health habit that this group struggles with disproportionately -- they are about as likely as others to exercise frequently and eat healthily.
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
I don’t think food stamps can buy ciggies. I know people sell stamps for cash that they can then buy them, but I don’t think alcohol or cigs can directly be bought with them.
I say drug test govt benefit takers. We all haveto take drug tests for JOBS, let them take tests for their BENEFITS that come from govt confiscating money from others.
They buy them illegally at a much reduced cost. There are plenty of fraternal organizations in my area where you can buy bootleg cigarettes. Soldiers coming up from Fort Bragg can make a lot of money filling their cars with cartons of Marlborough cartons before heading back to New England.
well, if they are living on government monies, they get food stamps, cash, housing assistance, child care assistance, etc.
notice in that list is “cash.” they have to have cash to buy non-food items such as toilet paper, clothes, etc.
and that is where the cigarette fund comes from.
Expanded Medicaid permits income up to about $33,000 for a family of poor. Not really that poor (much more income than my family).
What about the things they don’t list, like alcohol abuse, drug abuse, gambling. What is the big deal, why the effort to make poor people live healthy.........so they can live miserable for a longer time? So they can’t smoke, drink, eat food that tastes good, can’t gamble, for Christ’s sake you’ll have them healthy and alert enough to understand what obama, moochelle and the democrats have done to them and then they’ll commit suicide!
Drug tests have been tried in two states and were dropped due to 1) Low positive test rate and 2) High cost of tests.
I know an Asian grocer who installed in a big fresh-lobster and crab tank in his store. I asked who was buying $30/lb Alaskan king crab. He said it was mostly foodstamp users.
Article seems to say that more Medicaid smokers actually report that they smoke...in my household, our doctors know that we smoke, we just lie about how much. ; )
We have employer-provided health coverage (actually, earned by us of course, docked from our pay) and NOT "Obamacare"...and everyone frowns on smokers nowadays, so we're in a hugely over-taxed minority, BUT, it still IS legal, and we still live in the "land of the free"!!
I don't know how poor people afford cigarettes...probably from the good will of their friends, or the cheating of the vendors they use government benefits to buy them from.
But I will defend the right of anyone of the proper age to smoke cigarettes in their own home/car/etc...they can lie about it or not as they choose!
They don’t buy and take their medicine. They buy cigarettes instead.
Drug testing might make sense. But what’s your plan for when they test positive?
Are you going to send them to Rehab and try to break their addiction? Or are you going to just cut them off of food stamps and just let them starve?
Makes me like the high taxes on them, they line up for lottery tickets too,
Cut them off and let them retest in a month.
Why can’t anything be expected of them? Government places restrictions - literally thousands - of restrictions on what people can and cannot do with government money.
I see zero difference. They are the ones wanting to contract with the government for free benefits.
You can if the store is willing to commit fraud.
They don’t have to buy food, housing, cell phone service, so they have money for smokes! All thanks to you and me.
Well sure. But we can make penalties very high for stores that are found committing fraud, and we can strip the benefits for those that commit the fraud. this will reduce fraud in most cases as people are scared if the penalties are high to them.
So because some minor amount of fraud will occur we don’t do it?
Good question. There are plenty of "street people" i.e. beggars her in the Kona area, and most of them seem to smoke. You do have to wonder, at the hideous cost of the filthy things, why do they need money for food if they have plenty to feed the nicotine habit?
My uber-liberal sister claimed she would never give money to the street people because they would use it for cigarettes and booze.
Probably one of the few things I ever came close to agreement with the deranged old witch about.
They buy generic bags of tobacco, which is fairly cheap, and roll their own. That is what most do in my area.
When I applied for my life insurance policy a nurse came to my house and took a blood sample that was tested for marijuana, cocaine and nicotine. They wanted to make sure I wasn't lying on my application when I said I was a nonsmoker.
So it's good enough for private companies to drug test their people to make sure they are protecting their investment. I don't see a problem with government doing the same.
If these people were applying for a govt JOB they’d be drug tested.
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