2009-11-23 14:59:16 - The Senate's health care reform bill punishes the elderly by slashing hundreds of billions from Medicare, union members by taxing their comprehensive insurance plans, married couples by imposing a marriage penalty, patients seeking elective surgery by taxing their procedures, and high income entrepreneurs with added taxes, while imposing no penalties or otherwise seeking any contributions from those responsible for the largest preventable cause of the medical care crisis -- indeed, they are actually rewarded -- charges public interest law professor John Banzhaf, the man behind most of the successful legal actions aimed at the problem of smoking.

The estimated $848 billion dollar cost of reform over 10 years would be funded by slashing Medicare's projected growth by more than $400 billion, imposing an excise tax on comprehensive health care plans, creating a new marriage penalty by imposing a high tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more, imposing a "botox tax," and by other taxes on people who are not the cause of any unnecessary health care expenses.

In sharp contrast, smokers -- whose smoking costs the economy almost $200 billion a year, most of which is paid by nonsmokers in the form of higher taxes and inflated health insurance premiums -- are not taxed at all, and indeed are rewarded

by mandating coverage for expensive smoking cessation programs.

"If we eliminated smoking, the cost savings would be enough, by themselves, to pay the entire $848 billion dollar cost in five years rather than ten, and no one else would have to be taxed," notes Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first antismoking organization.

Because smokers -- unlike those covered by Medicare, union members with comprehensive health insurance, those undergoing elective surgery, married couples, and those with large incomes -- impose these huge and totally unnecessary health care and related costs on society, ASH has proposed that Congress enact a modest surcharge on smokers' policies, making them pay more for health insurance, just as they have long paid more for life insurance.

"This is the only funding option which would reduce health care costs themselves by hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting smoking," argues Banzhaf, rather than simply imposing taxes on the innocent. He notes that it's obviously much more effective to prevent lung cancers, heart attacks, and strokes in the first place than to try to reduce the costs of medical care with better records or improved treatments once smoking has already caused the medical problem to occur.

ASH says its smoker surcharge proposal is also the only one which would finally impose personal responsibility on people for health care, something everyone seems to agree is necessary, but nobody has the political courage to enact. It is also the only tax which has widespread public support, suggests both Banzhaf and MSNBC. ASH notes that at least ten states already charge their smoking employees more for health insurance than nonsmokers, as do many private companies.

ASH is writing to all Members of the U.S. Senate, urging them to consider even a modest surcharge on smokers' health insurance policies as a simple means and step in the right directions to both help fund health care reform and to slash the incidence of expensive diseases like cancer, heart attacks, and strokes caused by smoking. A copy of ASH's complete proposal can be found at: ash.org/proposalsurcharge

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Executive Director and Chief Counsel
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
America's First Antismoking Organization
2013 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006, USA
(202) 659-4310 ** ash.org