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- cross-posted to:
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Rishi Sunak is considering introducing some of the world’s toughest anti-smoking measures that would in effect ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes, the Guardian has learned.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister was looking at measures similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December. They involved steadily increasing the legal smoking age so tobacco would end up never being sold to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
I think a larger more unnoticed social harm is the damage it does to single payer/socialized medicine. When you only have one insurance pool every person receiving healthcare related to smoking is funding that could have gone to treating diseases that aren’t as easily preventable.
The same goes for things like diabetes, which is absolutely destroying medicare. Right now one out of every three medicare dollars are being used to treat a completely preventable disease for the vast majority of those inflicted with it.
I think that if you want to smoke or drink tons of soda, that’s fine. But we shouldn’t be lessening the scope of healthcare coverage for other people just because of your bad habits. Either the industry making the money needs to subsidize the healthcare cost of their consumers, or the consumers themselves need to do it.
At least over here, taxation on cigarettes offsets the direct cost caused by smoking according to experts. That’s why I left it out, I do believe you’re allowed to be stupid and smoke. But keep the damage to yourself and make sure non-smokers aren’t paying for it one way or another.
So yeah your demand is at least partially already reality over here.
“taxation on cigarettes offsets the direct cost caused by smoking”.
By about 25 percent. I calculated it a few years back combining the total US taxes on tobacco (state, federal and local) and comparing it to the Medicare expenditures on treating the percentage of lung cancer caused by tobacco smoking. This is actually pretty skewed against my claims since tobacco isn’t always smoked so the tax from smoking is smaller than the total tobacco tax revenue, Medicare only pays for a portion of the lung cancer treatments (since not everyone uses Medicare but the private insurance data isn’t as available), and this is only one albeit expensive aliment caused by tobacco smoking. So 25 percent is a generous estimate.
Long story short “sin taxes” don’t actually pay for anything, it’s a complete myth mostly promoted by people who want to use the product.
I thought smokers ended up being cheaper for healthcare in the long run because they don’t live as long?
Smokers on average don’t die that much younger. But they do have a much less healthy end of life.
Women: don’t smoke, but if you do, never stop.
/s for good measure
For private healthcare maybe? A lot of the reasons private insurance groups are even somewhat functional is because the vast majority of healthcare cost are shifted over to medicare once people start falling apart.
Most things like cardiovascular disease and lung cancer happen in the late 50s or older. People who aren’t yet old enough for medicare will file for disability to access it earlier in the event of severe illnesses.
I’m fairly sure cig smokers are a net gain on the Exchequer
That becomes ammo against single payer, then. “If we get socialist medicine, they’ll bring back prohibition!”
For-Profit healthcare is the scam here, not people drinking or smoking “too much,” whatever that means to you personally.