What if Obama stops smoking?
And millions of others? Health care costs will increase. Yes, smokers die younger and will not require all that expensive care in their old-old years. That sounds crass, but if you ever ran the numbers on all this "healthy" eating, exercise, and no-smoking stuff, you'd find wonderful reasons to be healthy, but saving the government money isn't one of them. But also, if they stop smoking, we'll have to find other ways to pay for all the SCHIP "children" (who are adults) who don't need government health care.
On Feb. 4, President Obama signed legislation that reauthorizes and expands the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Earlier in the day, the House — on a 290-135 vote — passed the Senate version of the SCHIP legislation that expands insurance to an additional 4 million children. The new law also gives SCHIP an additional $35 billion over the next five years. The extra $35 billion in costs would be funded by a 62-cent-per-pack increase in the federal tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The new law removes a restriction that prevented states from enrolling middle-class children without first proving that nearly all poor children had been enrolled. Some states found it difficult to meet that criterion. Former President Bush twice vetoed similar legislation. AIS Health
Since more low-income and poor people than rich people smoke, this is an additional tax on the poor. Raising the tax doesn't cause them to stop--it just takes their discretionary money from another pot--like groceries. Another example of taxing the poor to help the middle class.
"The release of a scant one-page summary for 21 years of care brought some criticism to the Obama campaign – especially when compared to the thousands of pages of medical records released by McCain. Obama promised reporters that if there are additional health-related questions, his campaign would make that information available. “In terms of additional records, if there are particular things that people have questions about, then we’d be happy to give that information,” he said." ABC News
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1 comment:
There is a delicate balance at work here. One must consider the "taxing the poor" argument and weigh it against the "sin tax" argument. Clearly, smoking is a bad thing and should be discouraged. However, my only objection is using the tax generated from smokers to pay for non-smoking related programs. The money should be used to either pay for the health cost burden created by smokers, or to find more effective ways of helping them to quit.
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