Fewer Smokers Means Higher Taxpayer Costs, Study Finds
A study detailed in the most recent New England Journal of Medicine confirms what opponents of tobacco litigation said all along — the government makes money off of smokers, and could spend more if enough of them quit.
The argument was dismissed as ghoulish at the time, and it still is. But a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the financial impact of a 50-cent-per-pack increase in cigarette taxes shows that while cutting the number of smokers trims government outlays over the short run, the increased longevity and higher end-of-life expenses of non-smokers eventually would cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars more from Medicare and Social Security. Only after factoring in the higher cigarette taxes themselves, and increased income taxes from healthier and presumably more productive workers, does lowering the number of smokers reduce the deficit.
The wave of lawsuits by state attorneys general against tobacco companies culminating in the $206 billion master settlement in 1998 accused cigarette manufacturers of a laundry list of violations from antitrust to deceptive trade practices. At their core, however, the lawsuits were seeking reimbursement for the costs of smoking imposed on taxpayers — primarily through Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor. According to this estimate by the CDC, those costs run about $22 billion a year, or 11% of total state Medicaid expenditures. State and local tobacco tax revenues, meanwhile, run $17 billion a year, according to this estimate.
The settlement was a bonanza for those who negotiated it. The dominant tobacco companies, especially Philip Morris (now Altria) got a virtual cartel that allowed them to immediately raise cigarette prices without facing competition from smaller companies, since the AGs wrote into the pact clauses that required new companies to pay into the settlement even though they had nothing to do with the alleged behavior behind the lawsuits. The private lawyers who represented the states are still pulling several hundred millions of dollars in fees a year from the settlement, which is scheduled to run at least through 2023. Other winners included the states, which are still getting billions of dollars in additional revenue from mostly lower-income smokers (although they could have gotten that without paying private legal fees, simply by raising tobacco taxes), and the National Association of Attorneys General, which negotiated its own $103 million payment that has since grown into a pool of money that funds much of the AG professional association’s budget.
The math behind the settlement always struck some people as confused, however. While the states could point to higher Medicaid costs due to tobacco (poor people are much more likely to be smokers, and smokers have a lot of chronic illnesses) that calculation ignored the fact that smokers also tend to die younger, and so avoid the medical expenses some elderly people run up at the end of life. Much of that’s funded by the federally funded Medicare program, but states also provide assistance to low-income elderly through Medicaid. And there was always that tax revenue from smokers, which somehow seemed to be omitted from the calculation.
The New England Journal article spells out the positive effects of a tax increase that decreased smoking overall. The conclusions:
•Higher taxes would reduce the number of smokers by 1.4 million by 2021 •10,000 additional adults would survive until that year because of lower smoking rates •By 2085 there would be 3 million fewer smokers and 200,000 more adults alive than without the tax increase •Healthcare expenditures would be 0.01% of GDP lower per year by 2085
The negative effects would be financial. While the government makes more money from lower levels of smoking from 2013 to 2021 — a relatively paltry $730 million — after then the effects of greater longevity would start to overcome the savings from tobacco-related medical costs. Rising income tax revenue from healthier workers would mean the increase still served to reduce the deficit until around 2060, the CBO estimates. Then the deficit would start to get larger.
Only if the government continues to collect higher taxes from millions of smokers who remain hooked on nicotine does the reduction in smoking reduce the deficit, the authors conclude. The net reduction in the deficit by 2085 would be about 0.015% of GDP. For comparison, the CBO estimates the primary deficit will be running at 7% of GDP by then if current policies are maintained.
Obviously, everybody would be better off if they quit smoking. What the CBO study shows is the litigation that showered such huge benefits on a few was based on the false premise that cigarettes cost taxpayers money. Unfortunately, tobacco is, and has always been, a very reliable moneymaker for the state.
Hey box, looks like smokers weren't smoking at the taxpayers expense after all. They actually used to smoke at the taxpayers benefit...Until the draconian anti-smoking laws were enacted by the left wing fascists.
it's the same as saying our 'medicine/healthcare has evolved to care for ALOT of folks with both real diseases and sickness along with caring for those with fluff&stuff issues, so that the now the natural process of natural selection and evolution has been disrupted'......
OMG.... didn't sesame street and barney and walt disney teach us well?????
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Science
Human Beings Are Getting Dumber, Says Study
By JuJu KimNov. 15, 201241 Comments
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Are Humans Getting Intellectually and Emotionally Stupid? Smithsonian.com Email Print Share Comment Follow @timenewsfeed Just look at all the amazing innovations modern technology has given us: at-home HIV tests, motion-activated screwdrivers and self-inflating tires. It’s easy to look down on our prehistoric ancestors for their primitive, electric screwdriver-less way of life. But one scientist says we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
In a two-part paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, Stanford University researcher Gerald Crabtree suggests that evolution is, in fact, making us dumber — and that human intelligence may have actually peaked before our hunter-gatherer predecessors left Africa.
(MORE: Creationists Boycott Dr Pepper Over ‘Evolution of Flavor’ Ad)
The reason? Life on the veldt was tough, and prehistoric humans’ genes were constantly subjected to selective pressure in an environment where the species’ survival depended on it. For humans, that meant getting smarter. ”The development of our intellectual abilities and the optimization of thousands of intelligence genes probably occurred in relatively non-verbal, dispersed groups of peoples before our ancestors emerged from Africa,” Crabtree said in a news release.
The urbanization that followed the development of agriculture simplified survival by removing some of its challenges, which likely weakened natural selection’s ability to eliminate mutations associated with deficiencies in intelligence. Crabtree estimates that over the last 3,000 years (about 120 generations), humans have sustained at least two mutations that have eroded our intellectual and emotional intelligence.
“A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate,” Crabtree wrote in the paper. He also noted that the average Athenian from 1000 B.C. would rank among the smartest and most emotionally stable in today’s society.
Not everybody agrees with Crabtree’s reasoning, however. Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, believes there is insufficient data to support his theory. ”Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any,” Jones told The Independent. “I could just as well argue that mutations have reduced our aggression, our depression and our penis length, but no journal would publish that. Why do they publish this?”
Crabtree does argue that no matter how deteriorated our intellectual abilities may have become over the millennia, advancements in technology will someday render these changes insignificant.
“I think we will know each of the millions of human mutations that can compromise our intellectual function and how each of these mutations interact with each other and other processes as well as environmental influences,” Crabtree said in the release. “At that time, we may be able to magically correct any mutation that has occurred in all cells of any organism at any developmental stage. Thus, the brutish process of natural selection will be unnecessary.”
Hey box, looks like smokers weren't smoking at the taxpayers expense after all. They actually used to smoke at the taxpayers benefit...Until the draconian anti-smoking laws were enacted by the left wing fascists.
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Rising income tax revenue from healthier workers would mean the increase still served to reduce the deficit until around 2060, the CBO estimates.
Sounds good to me!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Anything to justify controlling people's behavior is good enough for you. Even if it has a negative effect on the public. Authoritarians like controlling people just for sake of controlling people.
Anything to justify controlling people's behavior is good enough for you. Even if it has a negative effect on the public. Authoritarians like controlling people just for sake of controlling people.
I wonder how many NON SMOKERS lives would be saved if they tobacco tax doubled???
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I wonder how many NON SMOKERS lives would be saved if they tobacco tax doubled???
You mean like Hier Bloomberg and soda?
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
No. I mean how many non smokers get emphysema, cancer etc, from OTHER PEOPLE SMOKING!
Drinking soda may or may not cut years from your life, but if the person standing next to you drinks a dozen sodas, it won't impact YOUR HEALTH.
Cigarette smoke is a Class A Carcinogen... just like Asbestos, Chromium VI Particulates, Benzidine Arsenic Compounds, Vinyl Chloride, Benzene, 4-Aminobiphenyl, and Chloromethyl Methyl Ether, among others. Standing next to a smoker is like standing next to a toxic chemical dump!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
No. I mean how many non smokers get emphysema, cancer etc, from OTHER PEOPLE SMOKING!
I dunno...1%?
Could have gotten it from car exhaust that contains high levels of Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen dioxide, Sulfur dioxide, Particulate matter (soot), Benzene, Formaldehyde and various Polycyclic hydrocarbons
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
If the actual number is 1% then 2,200,000 non smokers die from second hand smoke.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
If the actual number is 1% then 2,200,000 non smokers die from second hand smoke.
Source?
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
There are 330,000,000 Americans. 23-25% are at some time in their life, smokers.
+ your number of 1%.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
If one or both of your parents were smokers, and you never smoke, your chance of getting lung cancer is doubled.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
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