Fixing Health Care Cheaply, Chapter 1: Butt Out

[BridgeRunner]

What would you say if they issued that fabled 500% tax increase on ammunition?

I'd say I disagree with it.

What pricing people out of a unhealthy habit is some how less evil that pricing people out of a Constitutional guaranteed right?

Yep.

Not less evil, though, just more legal.

[Brad Johnson]

I was addressing your statement...

I think the phrase "protect us from our choices" is pretty ambiguous. 

As a standalone phrase there is nothing ambiguous about it.  It is, in fact, quite simple and very easy to understand.  It means exactly what it says.

"To protect us from out choices" can also be phrased as "to keep us from doing ourselves harm" without changing the meaning one whit.  The inference for both phrases is the same ... someone else is better at choosing for me than I am, no matter what the subject, issue, item, or action.  It is a blanket accusation that the person(s) in question are so egregiously dimwitted that someone else must choose for them, lest they come to harm.  It is, in effect, pointing at the aformentioned "someones" and telling them they are too stupid to exist without someone else calling the shots.

So, no, it's not ambigious at all.  That is until someone wants their will to become my way.  It is an emotional rationale for imposing onerous and burdensom taxes, fees, and restrictions on otherwise legal behaviours simply because someone else doesn't like them.  

"Protect them from themselves" is the busybody's creed, the control freak's motto, and the socialist's way of life.

Brad

[Gewehr98]

We can debate the constitutionality and power-grabbing megalomaniac aspects of "sin" taxes 'til the cows come home.

I'm convinced we can do that all day long, assuming we don't insult other forum members or otherwise piddle in their Wheaties.

If the latter happens, then we will no longer do so, and there will be PMs sent.

We've been doing better since we nipped the "Liberals ate my Grandmother" crap in the bud.

Let's keep things on an even keel.  Forum staff really hates getting reported posts when a little courtesy and common sense beforehand would've precluded it. 

[LadySmith]

"Protect them from themselves" is the busybody's creed, the control freak's motto, and the socialist's way of life.

Brad

Quoted for truth.

[El Tejon]

Rather than equate them with food and drugs, if lawmakers were serious about the health costs of smoking, they would take the logical next step and just make the damn things illegal.

Oh, how I dream at night about this coming true.  Imagine tobacco being illegal, how about felony, state and federal statutes.

Just imagine all the arrests, the prosecutions, the smuggling, the neverending stream of income.  I could have any and all the guns I wanted.  I would have warehouses full of ammo and mags.  I could block solid months out for training.

*tears of joy*

I love you illegal tobacco, please come soon.

[digitalandanalog]

At what point do outrageous tobacco taxes become a de facto ban and the SCOTUS has to uphold an individual right to hasten ones steps off this mortal coil with the use of tobacco?

I am not a regular smoker by any means. It takes me at least a week to kill a pack when I feel like buying one (which is only three to four times a year) and I am pissed that my "regular" brand is is ungodly in cost now.

Everyone has the right to kill themselves as slowly or as quickly as they desire with whatever method they choose as long as they aren't malicious toward others.

The only "law" I could agree with is one that makes it illegal to pas your habit on to your kids via second hand smoke.

Every time I see some jerk making their kids suck in smoke they didn't ask for...well...I want to hit them...I don't, but I want to.

[Strings]

Then there's my mom-in-law, who ASKS me to share my second-hand smoke with her: yells at me about not sharing if I don't blow some smoke at her to inhale...

 Yes, my family DOES put the "fun" in "dysfunctional". Thanks for asking.

[Teknoid]

I've heard the theory that smokers cause much more of a burden on medical care for years, and always believed it was garbage. I don't believe the productivity line either. I've smoked all my working life, and missed more than five days work only twice in any year. The two times I missed more than five were due to back surgery and pneumonia.

Others are finally seeing things my way.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-tobacco-costs_N.htm

Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.

"It looks unpleasant or ghoulish to look at the cost savings as well as the cost increases and it's not a good thing that smoking kills people," Viscusi said in an interview. "But if you're going to follow this health-cost train all the way, you have to take into account all the effects, not just the ones you like in terms of getting your bill passed."

Viscusi worked as a litigation expert for the tobacco industry in lawsuits by states but said that his research, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals, has never been funded by industry.

Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

A Dutch study published last year in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal said that health care costs for smokers were about $326,000 from age 20 on, compared to about $417,000 for thin and healthy people.

The reason: The thin, healthy people lived much longer.

Willard Manning, a professor of health economics and policy at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies, was lead author on a paper published two decades ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that, taking into account tobacco taxes in effect at the time, smokers were not a financial burden to society.