In a short Atlantic piece, Death by Uninsurance, Daniel Akst hints that in addition to reducing waste in the current healthcare system, we may find a gold mine in reduced healthcare costs by educating people further on the dangers of smoking and unhealthy diets.
While he might have a point, it isn’t well backed up and the article takes a beating in the comments section:
…the idea that you decrease health care expenditures by reducing tobacco consumption is ludicrous. There is plenty of data out there suggesting that tobacco use actually DECREASES net government expenditures on a given person — and that health care costs alone are something close to a wash.
While I don’t pretend to know one way or the other, the idea does warrant consideration in my view. People who already have been smoking for a significant length of time, or people who are already well over weight, will likely mount significant costs that will be passed on to tax payers.
Which leads me to the following question, would the possible increase of deaths (and shorter life expectancy) associated with smoking save the government enough money to remove the huge taxes already in place on cigarettes? If we removed the tax on tobacco, would we save even more money in the long run by accelerating the purchase of cigarettes?
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