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still not true. There are many associated diseases that are chronic that cost alot to manage both from the hospital setting and medication/clinic setting. COPD, emphysema etc. Also of course Head & Neck Cancers, Lung Cancer, Bladder cancer, etc. Show me some stats to prove your side, because you are wrong. I do this ish for a living.NRA Lifetime Member
1A-2A = -1AComment
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I would favor banning cancer.Comment
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We need to hire some tobacco campaign managers to protect our guns.
The problem with gun control is that it is low hanging fruit, or easy for politicians to pick. Everyone has an opinion, and it is big media. Every shooting like the school shootings just stir it back up.
It invokes a lot of emotion, and thus there are people passionate about the topic.. either for or against guns. You don't even have to know anything about guns or gun control, you can just throw around emotional arugments and someone will agree with you. Logical arguments or statements are for whatever reason ignored and seen as heartless.
I almost think the only way we can fight fire is with fire. We need strong emotional campaigns about how having a gun saved the life of their child or allowed a mother to protect her children.Comment
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You do statistical analysis of lifetime medical costs for a living?
From anti smoking propaganda, so it should be biased your way:
"$96 billion in direct health care expenditures, or an average of $4,260 per adult smoker."
Tax, 17 billion and change.
Everyone dies from something, generally chronic something. Dying incredibly expensive. Anything that reduces lifespan cuts total healthcare costs significantly.
Some good info of how lifespan effects costs:
And here it is, laid out nice and neat for you:
The healthier you are, the more your healthcare costs the taxpayers.Comment
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You do statistical analysis of lifetime medical costs for a living?
From anti smoking propaganda, so it should be biased your way:
"$96 billion in direct health care expenditures, or an average of $4,260 per adult smoker."
Tax, 17 billion and change.
Everyone dies from something, generally chronic something. Dying incredibly expensive. Anything that reduces lifespan cuts total healthcare costs significantly.
Some good info of how lifespan effects costs:
And here it is, laid out nice and neat for you:
The healthier you are, the more your healthcare costs the taxpayers.
Those end of life care costs INCLUDE all the smoking related disease and death.NRA Lifetime Member
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Translation: didn't read any of the data and have nothing to refute it.
The last article spells it out with total costs.
Still presuming people dying from smoking wouldn't die from something else.
End of life cost are high regardless of what is causing the dying. That's what the data says. Smoking related death doesn't cost significantly more than the other kinds. That, coupled with less time on medicare means smokers save us money.
Look, I know you want to hate on smoking. Isn't it enough of a bad thing to know that people are dying? That bad enough, right? It will kill, make you look older, mess up your voice, hurt you stamina, etc. But it just doesn't increase overall healthcare costs.
FWIW I've worked for many years providing end of life care. Based on what I've seen, diabetes is probably the biggest money suck, given how long people can last with it.Comment
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@mage
You're using data to compare two completely different things and coming to a conclusion. That's just bad math.
Your first source just has a total number, that is divided by all adult smokers, regardless of whether they actually sought medical attention or not. So that number tells us nothing about the cost per sick person. The total spent on Medicare, on the other hand, is comprised almost exclusively of people that are seeking medical attention (even if it is just for check ups). So we're starting out of the gate with a bad comparison. Second, nothing in that data breaks down what the cost per smoking is in the last six months of life. What percentage of that 96 billion is for end of life treatment? Without that data, comparing it to the Medicare data it pointless. Furthermore, you left out the other 90+ billion from the first source. Loss of production is still a cost.
At best, smoking costs over 50% of what we spend on end of life care through Medicare. At worst (including productivity), we spend over 100%. Significant either way. But the bottom line is you just provided two numbers, not a comparison. The numbers don't represent the same type of data, thus cannot be directly compared. If you are going to make this claim you will need one of two things (preferably both):
Cost of End of Life Care for Average Smoker vs cost of End of Life Care for Average Nonsmoker
Or
Cost of End of Life Care for Average Patient with Chronic Illness Caused by Smoking vs Cost of End of Life Care for Average Patient with Chronic Illness Not Caused by Smoking
There have been multiple studies to show that long term smoking significantly increases health care costs. Maybe all those studies are flawed. Maybe you'll be the one to prove it. But what you have offered so far is proof of nothing other than totals spent.
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As for the topic, all sides see what they want to in numbers. I can list a ream's worth of pages filled with conservatives using numbers in misleading ways, then follow up immediately by examples of liberals doing the same, followed by examples of libertarians doing the same, followed by... (Starting to see the pattern yet?)Last edited by 67goat; 08-13-2013, 1:35 PM.Comment
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In thinking about it more, another metric could also be used:
Average Total Tax Subsidized Health Care Over Life of Smoker vs same for Nonsmoker
Still not data that is presented directly in any of those links.Comment
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Every year in the United States ~20,000 people are killed or injured as a result of fire in the home. Every fire department I'm aware of advocates that people keep an extinguisher in their home.
Every year in the United States ~790,000 people are killed or injured as a result of violent crime. Statistically speaking, you'd think people would take and public safety agencies would advocate greater precaution than they do against fire?
.My personal blog: The Damn True ExperimentComment
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