The burden of smokers longterm healthcare costs on our social safety nets is costing me money. That makes it my business.
WHOA!!!!! Those are fightin words! Smokers are not a financial burden as you imply: Smoking-related healthcare costs are a pittance to overall healthcare costs (8% in my state of Wisconsin). If every smoker quit, healthcare costs would go down only temporarily and then rise above the amount you are complaining about now, because nonsmokers get sick too and for more years. Smokers more than make up for their extra cost by dying (their choice-not yours) sooner; collecting less social security and pensions, and less time in nursing homes. The state tax on cigarettes is all gravy. This is all backed up by facts. You should know this if you're going to play with numbers. Not only did the Congressonal Research Service, at the request of rabid anti-smoker Henry Waxman, determine that smokers pay far more into the system than they cost the system, even the New England Journal of Medicine said the same. additionally the Master Settlement Agreement between the states and the tobacco companies was ossensibly to repay the states for "smoking related medical expenses" and that is paid 100% by smokers, not by the tobacco companies. Smokers not only pay "their own damn bills," they pay the bills for a whole hell of a lot of nonsmokers as well. And they/we have since at least 1994 when taxes were a lot lower than now. The only way you can conclude that smokers cost society is to make the assumption that no one else ever gets sick, has an accident, or dies. You've been hornswoggled by the anti juggernaut.
either you've done ZERO research on this subject,
or think you'll just slide in here and tell all us ignorant chumps what's what, huh ?
Total bullpuckey...and you know it. Your line above reeks of "Democrat Underground".....you really, really need to reconsider you registration here. This is not a forum for those concerned with "social safety nets".
Like the screen name, by the way.
You're not from Tombstone are ya, Les?
Bzzzzzzt. Nice try, here are your parting prizes. Since smokers do not live as long, they have smaller healthcare bills than non-smokers. We all die of something, and we all spend thousands fighting for those last few months or years. The major difference? Smokers tend to fail more quickly, and at an earlier age.
(Personally, as an 8-year old, I watched my favorite grandmother hack her cancer-ridden lungs up until she died... and that was enough to keep me from ever trying the habit, despite the fact that both parents smoked.)
Now that I've checked, you've apparently gotten well-flamed for your post, so I think I'll defend at least one part of your response... the social safety nets DO make private health issues into public ones. For this reason, among many others, those "social safety nets" should be eliminated. If this is what you are implying with your post (although I honestly doubt it), then you'll probably find quite a bit of FReeper support. Otherwise, you'll want to keep the flame-resistant suit near-by. ;^)
That old crock has been debunked so many times it's due for an oil change. If that's the only reason you think what others do is any of your business, you'd better start looking for a new hobby.
"After the Clinton administration proposed a fairly substantial increase in the cigarette tax as a way of funding health care reform, my colleague Dennis Zimmerman and I wrote a paper entitled "Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform and Economic Analysis." (CRS, Library of Congress, #94214 E ) The part of the paper I'd like to talk about is the justifications for increasing the cigarette tax.
"I'm an economist, so I start with the presumptions that people have subjective preferences about what they like to do and how they spend their money and that, in general, we want to allow people to enjoy their lifetime resources in accord with those preferences. We would intervene in those decisions only under certain kinds of circumstances that we try to delineate and measure.
"When you buy a pack of cigarettes, you pay the price of the cigarettes. You also assume some implicit costs that you know about if you are aware of the health effects of smoking. But there might be another part of the cost that you don't pay, the cost that smokers impose on other people. That is the kind of cost that we were trying to examine. When we looked at the study done by health economist Ray Manning and several associates (funded by the RAND Corporation) we found that the spillover effect per pack of cigarettes was 33 cents. At the time (1994), the sum of federal, state, and local cigarette taxes was about 50 cents per pack. So the cigarette tax was already higher than the spillover cost."--Jane Gravelle, economist, Congressional Research Service.
"The lifetime health cost for a smoking man is $72,700 and $94,700 for a smoking woman. For nonsmokers, the cost is $83,400 for a man; $111,000 for a woman.
"If people stopped smoking today, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs." --New England Journal of Medicine,1997;337:1052-7.
It may interest you to know that even Congress admits smokers are paying their own healthcare and a lot of yours too.
It is irrational to say that cigarette smoking causes premature death and extended medical care both; no statistician could possibly agree.