“No Smoking, No Health Care” Is Total BS
Kevin, M.D. linked to a video today that satirizes the recently-vetoed S-CHIP bill designed to simultaneously insure more children and reduce smoking. You know, in America, where we live and we have actual citizens and issues and stuff to take care of. As opposed to the Middle East, which we occupy.
Also,
Ridiculous. They’re completely missing the point. How could someone possibly interpret this bill as pro-smoking? What smokers do you know who will gladly pay for cigarettes that come with a hefty tax? It’s not as though they’re cheap in the first place. I happen to think the design of the bill—promoting something good while canceling something bad—is brilliant, and I’ve said as much in the past (however indirectly). It will inevitably reduce some smoking to some extent.
I equate it with recent taxes on SUVs in London, which are quite severe. Same principle: The government needs more money, so tax something deleterious and kill two birds with one stone. If you drive an SUV in London, you’re going to pay dearly for it. Who in their right mind would then go out and happily buy an SUV??
Oh yes, let’s also not forget that the “billions” these people are purporting this bill to cost in order to fund the program—the whole program, all several years’ worth of it—is what the US is currently spending in Iraq every single week. This “no smokers, no health care” BS is completely baseless. Perhaps if we weren’t throwing the country’s money away like it’s our job (which, it seems, it is), we’d not have to rely on taxing cigarettes.
Actually I think the bill is pretty ironic since if you’re poor (and thus qualify for sChip) you’re much more likely to be a smoker than if you’re rich. One might argue that they’re actually getting the poor to pay for their *own* healthcare with such a tax.
I’m not saying, I’m just saying…..
Good point. However, one can assume that if you’re a smoker with kids, the kids are more likely to be sick as a result of your smoking (unless you’re really careful), and you’re also less likely, on average, to smoke as much as you did prior to the bill being passed, if it ever gets passed, because of the increased cost to do so. So, you’d have more money to spend on, say, your kids’ and your own health.
On second thought, I suppose one could make the argument that smokers with kids could continue smoking and feel like they’re getting free health care for their kids out of it, which is similar to what these folks are saying, but I doubt anyone who smokes will put so much thought into it regarding the basis for why they smoke.
Well, sure. Raising the price of anything will reduce the quantity demanded. How much depends on the shape of your demand curve.
I actually have no problem with this bill. This is because I see cigarette taxation as as stupid person tax (because smoking is really stupid). But there are a lot of people who see cigarette taxes as a regressive tax also, meaning that poor people are taxed more heavily than rich people, and take issue with cigarette taxation for that reason.
Just throwing different sides of the argument out there. I think it’s amusing that some people are trying to argue that this as a “pro-smoking” bill, though. What a crock!