re: #273 Mich-again

On another note, I question the whole assumption that smoking adds to the country’s financial problems because of higher medical costs for smokers. A real analysis would have looked at expected lifespans and the medical costs of the people who lived 20 more years because they didn’t smoke. Cold way to look at it, yes. But math is supposed to be cold.

Yes, and assertions are supposed to supported by evidence:

In their new book “The Price of Smoking,” Duke University health economists calculated this sum by analyzing all the costs of smoking — personally, to the smoker’s family and to society at large.

Their analysis found that the cost for a 24-year-old smoker over 60 years was $220,000 for a man and $106,000 for a woman, or a total of about $204 billion nationally over 60 years. The figures include expenses for cigarettes and excise taxes, for life and property insurance, medical care for the smoker and for the smoker’s family, and lost earnings due to disability.

Costs borne only by the smoker amounted to $33 of the $40-per-pack total, or $182,860 for a man and $86,236 for a woman over the smoker’s lifetime. Incidental costs such as higher cleaning bills and lower resale values on smoky cars were not included.

The study differs from previous smoking studies in that it comprehensively analyzes a wider range of costs over a smokerfs entire lifetime, drawing on such data as Social Security earnings histories dating back to 1951. Most smoking studies rely on data that provide a snapshot of annual costs, said co-author Frank Sloan, professor of economics and director of the Center for Health, Policy, Law and Management at Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

The “life cycle” method used in this research could prove equally enlightening in the study of other health behaviors, such as obesity and excess alcohol use, Sloan added.

The study calculates costs to the smoker’s family separately from costs to the smoker himself, figures that most economists lump together.

“Given the high rate of divorce and the questionable assumption that spouses condone smoking on the part of their husbands or wives, we believed it made more sense to separate costs to the smoker from costs to his family,” Sloan said. Those costs amount to $23,407 over the smoker’s lifetime, or about $5.44 of the $40-per-pack total.

The authors found that smokers’ costs to society are less than generally believed — about $1.44 of the $40-per-pack total — when costs to the smoker’s family are not included.

“The reason the number is low is that for private pensions, Social Security, and Medicare — the biggest factors in calculating costs to society — smoking actually saves money,” Sloan said. “Smokers die at a younger age and don’t draw on the funds they’ve paid into those systems.”

Using this figure, some economists might suggest that cigarette excise taxes in many states already are high enough to recover society’s portion of the cost of smoking.

But when the combined costs to society and to other family members are considered ($6.88 per pack), one might conclude instead that excise taxes are far too low, Sloan said.