Originally posted by Gunslinger
YEA just wait till these people are telling you that you cant even smoke in your own home!!!!!!
Oh yeah, not to mention what it costs me to support the smoking public. The word hypocrite comes to mind.
http://www.smokinglungs.com/whatcost.htmThere is currently a major debate ongoing in our society as to how the problem of continued funding of the Medicare administration can be accomplished. Currently, each working citizen contributes 2.9 % of his salary to fund Medicare. It is now predicted that the Medicare administration will become bankrupt sometime during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In an effort to prevent such a catastrophe, multiple potential solutions are being tried. Managed care medicine is sending patients home within hours after childbirth or major surgery. Patients with cancer and other life threatening diseases are being denied new experimental treatments. There is serious discussion of rationing expensive care for elderly patients. Despite public dissatisfaction and the fact that consumers are already in revolt over cuts in health services, no action is being taken by our leaders to reduce the health and fiscal consequences of the number one preventable disease causing factor in our country. No, it's not drunk driving, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, guns, prayer in school or pornography. It is tobacco, the single most expensive cost item on the Medicare budget.
There is incontestable data from thousands of different medical and epidemiological sources all over the world, that cigarettes and other tobacco products kill three million people each year, including approximately 430,000 U.S. citizens. This carnage does not seem to move our elected representatives, and they have done almost nothing to change this lamentable situation.
Perhaps, consideration of MONEY, rather than loss of human LIFE and suffering is needed to catch the attention of our politicos.
The financial consequences of cigarette smoking are truly mind-boggling. The cost of tobacco related diseases including coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular accident (stroke), peripheral artery disease, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, lung cancer and cancer of the lip, mouth, larynx, esophagus, pancreas and bladder has been calculated by conservative estimates derived from data collected in the National Medical Expenditures Survey. This data indicates that the direct cost of tobacco use is approximately $50 billion dollars each year. Direct costs include hospitalization, doctors bills, medications, and home and nursing home care. 43.3% of this amount is paid for by Medicare and Medicaid (MediCal in California). Put in different terms, the medical cost of each pack of cigarettes sold in the U.S. each year (24 billion packs) is $2.06, and the government pays $0.89 per pack of cigarettes. Before you become adjusted to these huge numbers, let me add that the indirect costs due to cigarettes including such things as fires, premature births, loss of productivity secondary to premature death adds up to another $50 billion or more.
State governments are also becoming increasingly aware of the adverse effects of tobacco on their local economies. The state of Texas, for example. reports (Texas Medicine, November 1993 p56-60) that it lost $4.2 billion in direct and indirect losses in 1990. This realization has led the attorney generals of a number of states, cities and counties to file suits against the tobacco industry for recovery of these losses.
Former Surgeon General Joseph A. Califano has called tobacco related diseases the largest single financial drain on Medicare, and estimates that these diseases will cost Medicare $800 billion dollars by the year 2010.
MacKenzie et al have reported the Human Costs of Tobacco Use in the New England Journal of Medicine March 31 and April 7, 1994 and noted the following facts.
* "The estimated average lifetime medical costs for a smoker exceed those for a non-smoker by more than $6,000."
* Insurance companies owned by tobacco companies charge smokers nearly double for term life insurance. (I am sure that they have a perfectly reasonable explaination for this given that they deny that cigarettes kill people.)
* Cigarettes are the leading cause of civilian fire deaths and injuries in the U.S. and cause $552 million in direct property damage annually.
* Smokers take an average of 6.5 sick days per year more than non-smokers.
Howard Barnum of the World Bank estimates that tobacco products cost the world economy $200 billion each year.
"This then, is a simple message: Tobacco consumption provides a net economic loss, and anti-tobacco policies are a cost-effective way to save lives and benefit the economy."
Despite these well known facts, the very politicians who prophesy the demise of Medicare, do nothing to regulate this public health hazard. It would therefore seem logical, that if we are truly interested in fiscal responsibility, balancing the budget and saving Medicare, then effective action will have to be taken to reduce this staggering financial loss.
Instead, our elected representatives, 79% of whom take political contributions from the tobacco industry, routinely gut effective tobacco control legislation. The most recent example, is the recently passed legislation to continue to subsidize tobacco farmers, to the tune of $34 million of your tax dollars each year to continue to grow the etiologic agent (tobacco) causing all of this physical and fiscal damage! What insanity!
