As we said in an editorial last week, you know the budget outlook is bad in Kansas when there is talk of closing prisons and canceling road construction. Cuts will be necessary, but they also won’t be enough. What is a conservative Legislature to do?
Well, House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, recently offered a surprising sign that at least one tax increase – the 75-cent-per-pack cigarette tax pushed by the Kansas Health Policy Authority – might fly at last.
“There’s a good chance it might pass this year, ” Neufeld told the Kansas Health Institute News Service. The thing is, he wants the dollars “dedicated to Medicaid,” freeing general fund money for other existing obligations. That would disappoint the health reformers who’ve pushed for such a hike to help bring more Kansans off the uninsured rolls.
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39 Comments
It’s guaranteed in this time of reducing tax income, that governmental taxing units will increase every avenue of potential tax income. Increased cigarette and liquor taxes (thankfully these don’t affect me), more traffic tickets, higher property taxes, more sales taxes (now that local politicians can see how they were able to pay for the needless, unwanted, unneeded white elephant downtown sports arena), and a host of other previously untapped tax sources.
Governments first thought is survival of its pet spending projects.
Ever see two speeding cars collide on virtually empty rain slickened streets on an early Sunday morning? That’s a small example of what we’re going to see with bureaucrats fighting, snarling over a dwindling pool of your tax dollars.
It’s guaranteed in this time of reducing tax income, that governmental taxing units will increase every avenue of potential tax income. Increased cigarette and liquor taxes (thankfully these don’t affect me), more traffic tickets, higher property taxes, more sales taxes (now that local politicians can see how they were able to pay for the needless, unwanted, unneeded white elephant downtown sports arena), and a host of other previously untapped tax sources.
Governments first thought is survival of its pet spending projects.
Ever see two speeding cars collide on virtually empty rain slickened streets on an early Sunday morning? That’s a small example of what we’re going to see with bureaucrats fighting, snarling over a dwindling pool of your tax dollars.
H’mmm, sorry for the double post on this chilly Sunday morning at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.
Oh yes the ole cash cow ploy again, what ever happen to the idea of taxing fast food? And we can add on the old me-me about it would reduce the number of under-aged smokers too! Oh wait a minute the last couple of times it was trotted out that angle was used and show to have no effect. Kids have no sense of value when it comes to money. And yes it might reduce the number of smokers because of the cost. But then I will ask the question, if that cash cow runs dries up where is the next cash cow that we can bank our future finances on? Sin taxes are always fun to depend on and they may never end since most of those being taxed are addicted and or subject to human nature.
The problem with cigarettes is that the cost of smoking cigarettes — up to the point that the smoker comes down with a fatal lung/throat/mouth or circulatory disease — is far greater than the retail price of all the cigarettes smoked up to the same point in time.
Emergency health care, the cost of dying due to smoking, the cost of hanging onto life util an irreparably damaged heart fails: these costs are not covered, on a unit basis, by the unit price of a cigarette (and yes, I am being very blunt here, painfully honest).
That’s not a pretty pair of sentences, I apologize. What I meant to say is that the retail price of cigarettes fails to capture all the costs of consuming cigarettes. Because cigarettes are underpriced, the quantity of cigarettes consumed is far greater than that quantity would be if they were priced so that the economic profit was zero.
Because government, especially state government, is too often left picking up the tab when smokers linger on in life (again I apologize for being so blunt), then government, especially state government, is justified in raising the price (via tax) high enough to lower the quantity consumed. The fewer cigarettes consumed, the better off state budgets are: this is very likely a direct correlation.
Cigarettes are a huge problem: they too often lead to enormous suffering and end-of-life care costs. Their price does not capture these costs, and therefore too many are consumed. Not only is the state, as a budgeting entity, within its rights to raise the unit price through taxation, it’s acting in a socially responsible way to do so.
Heres an idea. I purpose a new tax. The anti smoking nazi tax. If you are a anti smoking zealot who wants smoking bans and ever higher taxes on smokers, than there should be a special excise tax on you. Its only fair. After all, we are subjected to those awful radio and TV ads. The Kansas Health Foundation especially should come in for large taxation. Their charter says they are to use their money and grant making power to improve the health of all Kansans. Instead they have focused on smoking and smoking bans. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. If you listen to any Salina radio, you know what I mean. For months now they have been running these hideous “smoke is poison” ads. What a shame. We are constantly told about how many uninsured and under insured Kansans there are. Why not use that money to help those people instead of letting it go up in smoke on those worthless ads.
Chrisfrommactown
Posted November 30, 2008 at 8:28 am | Permalink
Heres an idea. I purpose a new tax. The anti smoking nazi tax. If you are a anti smoking zealot who wants smoking bans and ever higher taxes on smokers, than there should be a special excise tax on you. Its only fair. After all, we are subjected to those awful radio and TV ads. The Kansas Health Foundation especially should come in for large taxation. Their charter says they are to use their money and grant making power to improve the health of all Kansans. Instead they have focused on smoking and smoking bans. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. If you listen to any Salina radio, you know what I mean. For months now they have been running these hideous “smoke is poison” ads. What a shame. We are constantly told about how many uninsured and under insured Kansans there are. Why not use that money to help those people instead of letting it go up in smoke on those worthless ads.
—
And here you have the problem with the GOP ca2008.
Their ideas are confused, their thinking is weak. All they have to offer is the dismantling of government, chaos, and anger.
Mostly anger.
This is why you guys lost badly earlier this month. It’s also why you’ll continue to lose, until you can act like responsible adults.
Sorry dude,i still believe Ronald Reagan when he said that “Government is not part of the solution, Government is the problem”.
Yes, I know.
As you may have figured out by now, those who lead your party disagree with you. Medicare Part D, Iraq rebuilding, Wall Street bailout: the very top of the GOP is diametrically opposed to the ideas of Reagan, and have been for all of the 21st century.
Your problem is this. Is Reagan and his 20th century mindset, heavily dependent as it was on the existence of the USSR and the perceived vitality of communism, irrelevant in 2008 (and thus Bush correct)? Or is the DC GOP wrong (and Reagan is relevant despite the dissolution of the USSR and the collapse of communism as a driving force in projecting world power)?
If Reagan is relevant today, then you need to explain what happened in DC the past 8 years. If Reagan is irrelevant, then you’ll need to change your motto.
It’s a dilemma.
Reagan is relevant yesterday, today and tomorrow. And no I am not supportive of the big government programs you listed. Programs you no doubt would support wholeheartedly if they were purposed and passed by democrats. If you think I am a republican it is only because their rhetoric (if not their actions) come closer to what I believe than do the democrats.
My hope and my faith is not in politics, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is just something I do for fun.
One of the key characteristics of Milton Friedman’s monetary theory, by the way, was the nature of the econometric models he used. Friedman favored a “black box” approach to economic models. A “black box” approach is one where the modeler proposes that input A leads to output B, and how A leads to B is irrelevant. Friedman considered it irrelevant because he believed it was inscrutable, like the contents of a box painted black.
Friedman thought Keynes focus on the “why” was a waste of time. This goes right to the heart of conservative philosophy. This is utterly integral to the conservative mindset, the way that the conservative “type” thinks.
Don’t get me wrong, Friedman was a great economist, very likely the second greatest economist of the 20th century. Wherever his rank, his monetary theory retains enormous power to explain real world events.
Friedman is relevant here because right now you, and others, believe that government is a black box. You guys see input A going in, and output B coming out. Your theory is that output B is suboptimal, and that without going through the black box B could be something greater than it is now.
What you are missing, though, is that right now ALL of the action is in the black box of government. The GOP has seen to that. Right now that’s where everything will happen, is happening, because the thinking is that only government has the least-cost solution to what ails economies all over the world.
If the GOP reverses course now it will be in the wilderness for some time to come. We’ve all seen what happens when the GOP has total control: the top of the party lets the bottom of the party smash and crash government, but the top never really believes in smashing and crashing. This confusion leads to a helluva lot of pain for the average American. It’s not unlike the old biz skool admonition to never “hope for A while rewarding B.” That is, never trash the infrastructure of government while simultaneously holding out government infrastructure as a solution.
If the GOP wants to acquire power again any time soon, it will need to abandon Reagan, realize that government CAN be a significant part of the solution, and relearn the tools of policymaking.
Yall ought to do it soon, before what’s left of your policymaking gurus dies off. Guys like James Baker, GHW Bush, and Newt Gingrich: yall need to learn from these guys, and quick.
Chrisfrommactown
Posted November 30, 2008 at 9:07 am | Permalink
My hope and my faith is not in politics, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is just something I do for fun.
—
This reminds me of a quote from a great, great movie, Ang Lee’s “Ride With the Devil:”
[Mr. Evans, a Confederate sympathizer, has Jack Bull and Jake as guests]
Mr. Evans: You ever been to Lawrence KS young man?
Jack Bull Chiles: [scoffs] No, I reckon not Mr. Evans. I don’t believe I’d be too welcome in Lawrence.
Mr. Evans: I didn’t think so. Before this war began, my business took me there often. As I saw those northerners build that town, I witnessed the seeds of our destruction being sown.
Jack Bull Chiles: The foundin’ of that town was truly the beginnin’ of the Yankee invasion.
Mr. Evans: I’m not speakin’ of numbers, nor even abolitionist trouble makin’. It was the schoolhouse. Before they built their church, even, they built that schoolhouse. And they let in every tailor’s son… and every farmer’s daughter in that country.
Jack Bull Chiles: Spellin’ won’t help you hold a plow any firmer. Or a gun either.
Mr. Evans: No, it won’t Mr. Chiles. But my point is merely that they rounded every pup up into that schoolhouse because they fancied that everyone should think and talk the same free-thinkin’ way they do with no regard to station, custom, propriety. And that is why they will win. Because they believe everyone should live and think just like them. And we shall lose because we don’t care one way or another how they live. We just worry about ourselves.
Jack Bull Chiles: Are you sayin’, sir, that we fight for nothin’?
Mr. Evans: Far from it, Mr. Chiles. You fight for everything that we ever had, as did my son. It’s just that… we don’t have it anymore.
Better idea. Luxury tax.
Tax people who can afford to buy cars and airplanes and fancy jewelery. Leave us smokers alone for once.
Let them tax booze in the same way then. And cheeseburgers and unhealthy foods.
I’m sick of smokers always getting the shaft.
Let someone else shoulder it. Stop passing it onto the smokers as if we’re the demons of the state’s ills.
Pedant you’re wrong. Studies have shown that since smokers die earlier, we also cost less money in the long run than someone who never smoked.
And its not as bad for you as the freakshow anti-smoking Nazis want to make it out. You do anything for 40 years and it’ll kill you too.
If we’re going to over tax everyone’s bad habits, I’m betting I can find one of yours to tax too.
Auto racing seems to need a big tax increase. Heck they use all that gasoline and only for sport. I also think gun owners should be paying to cover the cost of those being killed by guns.
See, we could play this game all day long.
What about auto accidents? Lets tax drivers triple to cover the enormous cost of trauma and long term disability from auto accidents!
Raising the cigarette tax is the lazy politician’s way out. It doesn’t require any thinking and especially is a good showy way to protect the politician’s pet projects. After all, who is against sin taxes? Tax that booze, tax those cancer sticks. It boils down to a cop-out, cynically thrown out every time the legislature runs a little short of money. The candidate I worked for sort of blithely said, oh, we’ll raise the taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. I liked her a lot, but that irritated me.
Dennis
“My hope and my faith is not in politics, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is just something I do for fun.”
Hmmmm…I wonder if Jesus will help pay your medical expenses when you’re dying from lung cancer?
I have to disagree that smokers cost less in the long run…do you have ANY idea how long smokers can hang on once they’ve been diagnosed with COPD? I have a patient to whom I’ve been administering breathing treatments for the last 9 years..twice a day at $150 per treatment…care of Medcaid, that doesn’t even include the cost of his meds, which is over $1,000 per month…care of Medicaid. You do the math. Unfortunately, it’s the ones who can least afford health care that smoke.
If everyone quit smoking, lost weight, and watched their diet…we wouldn’t have to be whinning about the cost of taxpayer funded health care.
“The economic, social, and emotional burden imposed on the people of the United States (U.S.) by tobacco smoking is tremendous. Cigarette smoking remains the single most important preventable cause of death, disease, and disability in the U.S. It results in “more deaths each year than AIDS, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide, suicide, motor vehicle crashes, and fires – combined”.2 It is estimated that cigarette smoking kills more than 440,000 people a year in the U.S.3 Further, the number of people in the U. S. who die from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), sometimes called second-hand smoking, and from pregnancy-related smoking is approximately 40,000 per year.4
The total annual public and private healthcare expenditures caused by smoking-related disease and disability is at least 75 billion dollars. Annual Medicaid payments total $23.5 billion , with the federal government share being about 57% and the states paying 43%. The federal government also pays at least $20 billion per year in smoking-related Medicare costs. An additional $8billion in smoking-related healthcare costs is paid through the Veteran’s Administration health system.4
The non-healthcare-related costs associated with cigarette smoking include: residential and commercial property losses from smoking related fires, commercial cleaning and maintenance, and Social Security Survivors insurance for children who have lost a parent to smoking. These costs combined equal an estimated $6.6 billion per year. The largest single non-healthcare cost is lost productivity, which is estimated to cost at least $82 billion per year.4
The cumulative economic burden of cigarette smoking in this country totals more than 150 billion dollars per year. Health costs and productivity losses are more than $7.00 for every pack of cigarettes sold. The federal and state tax burden for “smoking caused” government spending is $550 per household per year.4 It is clear that cigarette smoking in this country is costly to smokers and non-smokers alike.”
And where did you get that information Mary? An anti-smoking site?
You know as well as I do 9 years is a lot compared to someone with COPD typically. And I doubt he took breathing treatments twice a day for 9 years. Probably started out once a week, then moved to twice a week…etc. And it only costs that much because you’re administering it. Most can do it themselves. The cost isn’t that high.
If he quit smoking well that just prolonged his life even longer now didn’t it?
My grandma smoked till the day before she died of COPD. From disability to death it was 4 years.
Better idea: quit smoking.
No, actually he started out 4 times a day, then Medicaid cut him down to twice a day…he is retarded and can’t do them for himself. He tends to do it all day long if he’s on his own.
The above info I just found on the CDC web site. I really don’t think it can be disputed, the statistics are what they are.
In Kansas we spend more than 900 million dollars a year treating smoking related illnesses…300 million for Medicaid recipiants alone. It ain’t cheap. Just think if everyone quit smoking what we could do with all that money.
What bothers me the most is how it affects the quality of a person’s life..I watched my brother in law die last year from emphysema, not only was it a horrible way to die, he suffered for years and wasn’t even able to walk across a room without severe SOB and dyspnea. Not Everyone who smokes gets lung cancer..but they will get emphysema. My cousin died from it when she was only 45.
Now I get it Mary. You don’t like smokers and others whose lifestyle choices lead to costly end of life care because you have figured out that they are a big part of the reason that we cannot afford universal government paid health care. Haven’t you figured it out on your own. Just like abortion and the republicans, the democrats want to continue to use universal health care to keep you voting for them.
“Mary_Caruso” notes –
“My cousin died from [emphysema] when she was only 45.”
I have sympathy for your loss, but the dollars and cents fact is she never cost Medicare anything.
COPD is obviously no walk in the park. Literally. But neither is prostate cancer and neither is Alzheimer’s.
Thing is the anti-smoking rhetoric is so over-the-top. If everyone in America stopped smoking it wouldn’t “prevent 400,000 deaths a year,” it would merely delay those deaths. Unless quitting tobacco somehow bestows immortality, the hype from anti-tobacco interests is just as misleading and underhanded as Phillip-Morris.
Whatever….I would rather see the money go to other things other than totally preventable illnesses. And yes, universal health care would be great.
You’re right monkey…smoking at least keeps the population down and prevents Medicare from having to pay health care costs for so many old people….maybe people should stop wearing seatbelts and we could stop immunizing our children..that would help, too.
Oh yeah…and we should encourage people to eat big macs everyday…especially the ones with a genetic predisposition to heart disease and diabetes. They usually die pretty quickly if we just deny them medical intervention when they have a coronary or their kidneys shut down.
That’s it for me…I’m going to go make a big bowl of popcorn and put lots of butter on it! YUM!
There had to be another reason why she had emphysema at 45 years old. Chain smokers and miners live longer than that.
How about live and let live? We’re all going to die, stop taking enjoyment out of life.
Go fer it. Raise the tax to 10 bucks a pack!
But keep an eye on sales. Once the smokers are gone, you will need a big, new, and HUGE new revenue source.
I like it because all the poor f-cks smoke. It’s a small way to make the lower in lifes contribute a little something to society.
$10 bucks a pack tax.
$10 a gallon tax.
You want to see change?
Make it hurt!
American_Way
Posted November 30, 2008 at 9:28 pm | Permalink
I like it because all the poor f-cks smoke. It’s a small way to make the lower in lifes contribute a little something to society.
————————————————————–
For many of the poor, it’s the biggest tax they pay!
That and beer JJ. Or maybe the tax on MadDog.
I have contacted my local state reps and advised them to go with 10 dollars tax a pack.
The benefits far outweigh the cost.
Gas tax same-same.
Those who support solving Global Warming, should support a $10 gasoline tax.
Should make Cosmo’s day!
“How about live and let live? We’re all going to die, stop taking enjoyment out of life.”
I don’t worry about taking the joy out of someone’s life by encouraging them to stop smoking..believe me, you’ll do that all by yourself if you don’t stop. And no, my counsin died from the consequences of her heavy smoking and growing up in a house where her parents were heavy smokers…she had no other health problem other than her lungs were ruined, makes it hard to breathe when they don’t work anymore.
Smoking and drinking are choices people make. Smokers and drinkers are NOT genetically inclined to do so.
We need a Constitutional Amendment banning smokers and drinkers from getting married and having children.
I think people who smoke around their kids should be charged with child endangerment, we need to raise the tax on cigarettes, and we need to ban it in ALL public places…the more inconvenient and costly it is for smokers to smoke, more people will quit.
“I have sympathy for your loss, but the dollars and cents fact is she never cost Medicare anything.”
You don’t know that (no one really does). If the patient had lived to 70-80 and died of a heart attack, she might have cost less.
“COPD is obviously no walk in the park. Literally. But neither is prostate cancer and neither is Alzheimer’s.”
I don’t think that Mary’s cousin was quite the candidate for prostate cancer (which is at least preventable). Who knows about Alzheimer’s. Your point that we all die is well taken, and some have survived for a long time as smokers, but smoking does usually shorten lifespans and cause health problems. I see nothing wrong with using public policy to discourage the habit. And, if the revenues fall because people stop smoking, so much the better (although if it is taxed too high, it will simply become a black market product).
I do know that going to a restaurant in Wichita has become a universally more enjoyable experience.
Taxed too high, relative to neighboring states, and you’re inviting bootlegging. The government will increase cigarette taxes in an effort to keep revenue up with decreasing smoking. The last pack of cigarettes in America sold legally ought to go for about $50,000. Then, as others have pointed out, we’ll have to find some other people to pick on.