D.C. Circuit guts ObamaCare

[Crackerbox]

?

Cigarettes have been taxed for decades. Didn't seem to make any difference. If you put on a sufficient tax that it makes a difference you get the same black market that you get from outright prohibition.

The reduction in smoking has a lot of potential causes, but I don't think taxes are very high on the list. I'd say the huge 'secondhand smoke' campaign that has produced a 'you smoke near me I respond as if assaulted' environment was the most effective move, myself.

Well finally there's something we agree upon. Cigarette taxes do almost nothing to reduce the issue. Even higher premiums as the result of actuary studies didn't stop the problem.

If you know anything about smoking cessation, then two components have to be in there. 1) Counseling 2) Methods of reducing desire. Without both, the same people who smoked prior will end up returning to it. It's estimated that it's easier to quit heroin than tobacco. There are drugs that do reduce the desire significantly but not without risk. For many, it would be worth considering this as the permanent lung damage is ruinous to your health.

But why? We know that the tobacco companies add all manner of things to cigarette tobacco. Then they pay of unscrupulous scientists who used loathsome tactics to outright lie about the effects of tobacco smoking.

Given that people can grow it. I wonder how addictive it would be then? Probably a fraction of it' current addictive power plus it would take time to get it harvest. There in no moderation today versus history in which no one could smoke when they wanted unless wealthy.

Friendly, the old way was root cellars and putting the carrots in sand in order to help them not spoil. Since the temperature of the ground can get 55 deg F, then that chill helped keep the carrots fresher. But if you dehydrated them, then you can put a lot into one mason jar, then vaccum pack it.

Link to video.
It costs money to buy a dehydrator, but one can make a solar air dryer to do the same thing.

 

[Farm Boy]

I thought that carrots like potatoes keep in the ground for a long time ?
It seems carrots can be stored all year round, but once removed from the ground last only 4 weeks.

How much are canned carrots in America vs cost of raw carrots vs cookies ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot#Storage

Exactly in the storage. Carrots keep better than a lot of produce too. But keeping fruits or vegetables in the ground isn't really a great option for shipping, distribution centers, or grocers. The weight if nothing else, and they're already not humongously value dense for the fuel.

I don't remember for the fresh vs canned carrots vs a pack of Oreos in my area at the moment. Something about canned vs fresh spinach when she didn't specify a couple years ago and she won't give me the grocery list to pick up. Which is annoying. I like the prices at the Aldi where I shop better than HyVee. Which is evil except for the cheese counter. Which really is evil too.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Exactly in the storage. Carrots keep better than a lot of produce too. But keeping fruits or vegetables in the ground isn't really a great option for shipping, distribution centers, or grocers. The weight if nothing else, and they're already not humongously value dense for the fuel.

I don't remember for the fresh vs canned carrots vs a pack of Oreos in my area at the moment. Something about canned vs fresh spinach when she didn't specify a couple years ago and she won't give me the grocery list to pick up. Which is annoying. I like the prices at the Aldi where I shop better than HyVee. Which is evil except for the cheese counter. Which really is evil too.

Poor people don't eat Oreos. I can get twice the weight in store brand sandwich creams for half the price.

Not that I'm actually eating cheap vanilla sandwich creams right now.

Or anything like that.

I dip them in milk though, which is pretty much my only direct dairy intake.

Note that I have long since accepted trading life span for life style as a choice that works for me.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't buy the brand name either, aren't Oreos like Styrofoam or Kleenex? Who actually says polystyrene or sandwich creams?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't buy the brand name either, aren't Oreos like Styrofoam or Kleenex? Who actually says polystyrene or sandwich creams?

Sandwich creams. I say that. What's wrong with that? If you tell someone Oreos you won't get vanilla sandwich creams, which are superior.

I say tissues too. Got me on the Styrofoam though. That's a brand name? Really?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Are you saying you Aldis has a dedicated cheese counter?



we are now enemies

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Are you saying you Aldis has a dedicated cheese counter?



we are now enemies

 

[Crackerbox]

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, young people worked in food-coops and bought bulk organic produce, and by working in the co-op then you could get those foods for far less money. We could do some creative things like that. Once upon a time, excess food was purchased and canned, and that was given to the impoverished so it helped the American farmer, fed the impoverished, and kept food from going to waste. A lot of food is WASTED in America and it's disgusting. There is no valid reason for hunger in America. It's a totally solvable problem if we had the will to do it.

Link to video.
The Freegans are big on this idea.

If we did things like this with dehydrated food, then people could eat a variety of inexpensive stews and soups, probably eat healthier, and accomplish some significant health milestones.

Or we can eating ourselves to death and have issues with intubating extremely obese Americans, have persistant yeast infections in the folds of their skin, a massive amount of back issues, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. All of which costs a fortune in healthcare.

 

[Cutlass]

?

Cigarettes have been taxed for decades. Didn't seem to make any difference. If you put on a sufficient tax that it makes a difference you get the same black market that you get from outright prohibition.

The reduction in smoking has a lot of potential causes, but I don't think taxes are very high on the list. I'd say the huge 'secondhand smoke' campaign that has produced a 'you smoke near me I respond as if assaulted' environment was the most effective move, myself.

Photo
Credit Bruce Dale/Getty Images

Email
Save

The smoking rate among adults in the United States has dropped again, an encouraging trend that experts on smoking cessation attribute to public policies like smoke-free air laws and cigarette taxes, as well as media campaigns and less exposure to smoking in movies.

Eighteen percent of American adults were cigarette smokers in 2012, according to a report released last week by the National Center for Health Statistics, down from 18.9 percent the previous year. From 2009 to 2012, the rate dropped to 18 percent from 20.6 percent, the first statistically significant change over multiple years since the period spanning 1997 to 2005, when the rate fell to 20.9 percent from 24.7 percent.

“The fact that we’re below this theoretical sound barrier of 20 percent is important,” says Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of the university’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “This data shows that the whole premise that there is this hard-core group, where no matter what you do you can’t get them to quit, is just not true.”

Doctors and researchers who study smoking cessation point to a number of factors that may play a role in the latest drop.

“Now there is a strong evidence base about what works and what doesn’t work,” Dr. Glantz says.

School education programs, for example, don’t appear to be very effective, most likely because schools are difficult places to change social norms and it is hard to do the programs well given all the other demands in the school day, he says. But educating people about the tobacco industry’s marketing efforts can have a big impact. “We now have empirical evidence that people who don’t like the tobacco industry are about five times as likely to quit, and a third to a fifth as likely to start,” he says.

Dr. Richard Hurt, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he directs the Nicotine Dependence Center, says that two public policies have had significant effects on smoking cessation: increasing the price of cigarettes and creating smoke-free workplaces. “They reduce the number of cigarettes that people are smoking, usually between three and five cigarettes less per day for heavier smokers,” he says, and “increase the chances of a smoker stopping smoking.” Since children can’t as easily afford cigarettes and don’t see smoking as the norm when it is banned in so many public places, these policies also “decrease the chances of your child or grandchild ever starting to smoke,” he says.

...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/why-smoking-rates-are-at-new-lows/

 

[Farm Boy]

Sandwich creams. I say that. What's wrong with that? If you tell someone Oreos you won't get vanilla sandwich creams, which are superior.

I say tissues too. Got me on the Styrofoam though. That's a brand name? Really?

Hehe. There's nothing wrong with it. I just say vanilla Oreos though, which the brand name does make. Also yup on the Styrofoam.

Are you saying you Aldis has a dedicated cheese counter?



we are now enemies

Naw. The Hyvee has the cheese counter. And vastly higher prices. And race car shopping carts. Which, btw, you cannot undo. Go to Hyvee once and then take your two year old anywhere else. It's damned blackmail I tells ya.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Cutlass...Dr Richard Hurt, a professor of medicine, can say anything he wants. However my experience of people in the medical field is that their understanding of the effects of an economic policy like taxation could be inscribed on the head of a pin and still leave room for the angels to dance.

Sin taxes produce revenue, which actually inclines the government to exercise its power in an effort to maintain the 'sinning'...and there is no indication that any form of prohibition, be it total or tax on price has worked, ever, for eliminating consumption of a controlled substance.

He mentions the 'ban in the workplace', which is one aspect of what I called the 'environment where if you smoke near me I can react as if assaulted'...and that is what is really making a difference. California is now running a campaign about how a discarded cigarette butt is potentially lethal to wildlife, pets, and small children, so I expect there will be a rash of 'I beat him down because he put my child at risk' cases pretty soon, with sympathetic juries accepting the defense and telling the bloodied smoker he should seek help with his dangerous habit.

 

[Crackerbox]

Sin taxes like cigarette taxes are a disproportionate tax on the poor. Eventually as the American economy has declined, and so many people are unemployed (yes a crapload are at home and no longer included in the unemployment statistics due to changing the definitions), and on food stamps (EBT), then eventually they're too BROKE to smoke.

That's why smoking has dropped off.

Everything I learned in grad school about this subject, every journal article, pointed to an incredibly devious plan by tobacco companies to hook people on to the most addictive substance on the planet. Given time, without counseling and medication to break the cycle, most smokers will return to it.

No amount of education will turn it around. No smoke-free workplaces will fix it. Banning it in restaurants won't do it.

In history, having to grow tobacco meant it inevitably was used up. It was such a highly prized trade item. It was used in spirituality as incense. It was difficult to grow, and so there weren't that many people with this terrible and harmful addiction.

Coffin nails is definitely a good name for them.

Inhalation is a superior way of delivering a pharmacologic substance into the bloodstream. The inhaled substance easily passes over the alveoli of the lungs and into the blood vessels and is very rapidly absorbed. It avoids the first-pass effect of the liver for the most part versus ingestion of those substances. It's why asthmatics use inhalers. Tobacco then becomes incredibly dangerous over long term use as that builds up in those alveoli, ruining them, as well as spreading a mutagen all throughout the body.

It's a curse to American healthcare. An enormous amount of Cancer could be easily avoided merely by smoking cessation or never smoking a single cigarette.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

As has been demonstrated with every other addictive substance that we have driven up the price of through supply side interdiction, there is no such thing as "too broke to smoke". There may be "too broke to buy heroin" or "too broke to buy cigarettes", but supply side interdiction doesn't work because people just find alternative means. Note the guy the NYPD killed recently was allegedly a cigarette black marketer. California has an exorbitant tax on cigarettes too, which is why I could make a good living buying cartons from the trunk of a car and selling packs on the street, were I so inclined.

 

[Farm Boy]

But Tim, it's not being a filthy prohibitionist to tax something that we don't like. It's progressive!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

But Tim, it's not being a filthy prohibitionist to tax something that we don't like. It's progressive!

It generates revenue. Who doesn't like revenue?

 

[Crackerbox]

Does any of the cigarette tax revenue actually directly help the people with healthcare? It was partially raised to help SCHIP (see previous posts) which is an early form of healthcare for children and teens, but SCHIP was notoriously underutilized from its inception.

That cigarette tax probably results in paying for administrative costs.

Where does cigarette tax revenue go to versus what it was designed to do?
http://www.transformtobacco.com/Pages/TaxMoney.aspx

Spoiler :

Where Does the Money Go?

Cigarette taxes and settlement agreement funds are supposed to fund youth smoking prevention programs and other tobacco-related public health programs, but that’s not always where the money really goes. Instead, more and more of your taxes are used to fund causes and projects unrelated to tobacco control. Here are just a few of the projects funded by your MSA dollars:


New York
Dump trucks, golf carts and a course irrigation system, and a new county jail

Virginia
Broadband cable networks

New Jersey
Psychiatric care for prisoners

Alabama
Boot camps for juvenile delinquents; alternative schools

Nevada
Upgrading public television stations with DVD technology

Alaska
Harbor renovation and museum expansion

South Carolina
Water and sewer improvements

Michigan
Pasture and weather monitoring for a thoroughbred association in Kentucky

Kentucky
College scholarships

California
City parks and the purchase of undeveloped land

Illinois
A senior citizen prescription-drug program and property-tax rebates

Maine
Medicaid dental services

North Dakota
Water Resources Trust Fund and flood-control projects

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/13/233449505/15-years-later-where-did-all-the-cigarette-money-go

Spoiler :

To show the settlement was not just a big money grab, Levin says, there was definitely a feeling that states had a moral obligation to spend at least a sizeable chunk of money on programs to help people quit smoking and to prevent kids from starting.

"So it was understood without being codified into the agreement that states would make a big investment in this," he says. "They haven't."

To help guide state governments, in 2007 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that states reinvest 14 percent of the money from the settlement and tobacco taxes in anti-smoking programs. But most state governments have decided to prioritize other things: Colorado has spent tens of millions of its share to support a literacy program, while Kentucky has invested half of its money in agricultural programs.

"What states have actually done has fluctuated year by year ... but it's never come close to 14 percent," Levin says. "There are some fairly notorious cases of money being used for fixing potholes, for tax relief [and] for financial assistance for tobacco farmers."

Levin says some states don't have any money coming in anymore because they securitized their future payments with an investor in order to receive a lump sum. That lump sum often went into their state's general fund.
For its part, the tobacco industry has managed to weather the settlement fairly well. New products like smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes have put many companies on the road to big sales, Levin says.

"When you are supplying the most widely used addictive product in the world, you have certain advantages," he says. "Their cash flows remain enormous."

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm always wary of 'targeted' revenue. In this example, saying the increase in cig tax funds this SCHIP program means one of two things...either the program isn't really worth funding, but as long as we can prop it up as a worthy cause to justify the tax, great...or we would have to draw from other sources to fund this worthy program and we don't want to give up any funding from our more favored pets so let's generate some targeted revenues.

Bottom line, the government takes in many revenue streams and they all end up in the same pool from a practical standpoint. If you reach into that pool and say you are only taking dollars that came in from some particular stream you are kidding yourself, or someone else.

 

[Crackerbox]

There is nothing wrong with SCHIP. Frankly it's a fine program but poorly communicated. Lots and lots of impoverished people could have used it. It's a terrible shame more people didn't use it, for it was created like Obamacare to help those who most needed healthcare and without controversy. After all, who could legitimately complain about facilitating healthcare for young people?

But that's NOT what happened. Less than 14 % actually was used on healthcare despite the assuances that they would do so. Translation: they lied.

Give the US government a dollar and very little of it actually gets to the people. It's wasted on high administrative costs, boondoggles, pork, and some of it trickles back. It's supposed be 50% is LOST due to this.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There is nothing wrong with SCHIP. Frankly it's a fine program but poorly communicated. Lots and lots of impoverished people could have used it. It's a terrible shame more people didn't use it, for it was created like Obamacare to help those who most needed healthcare and without controversy. After all, who could legitimately complain about facilitating healthcare for young people.

But that's NOT what happened. Less than 14 % actually was used on healthcare despite the assuances that they would do so. Translation: they lied.

Give the US government a dollar and very little of it actually gets to the people. It's wasted on high administrative costs, boondoggles, pork, and some of it trickles back. It's supposed be 50% is LOST due to this.

Never said there was. My post was entirely about the concept of targeted revenue as related to sin taxes.

Chasing down the rabbit hole topic of inefficiency in government is not my interest. I will look into this SCHIP thing though. I'm guessing it was the source of funding for a program that paid for patches for people for a while some time ago. I really tried to push some of my smoker friends and family into taking advantage of that, but had little success.

 

[Crackerbox]

State CHIP programs has broad bipartisan support. That's the main issue I have with how Obamacare turned out. The biggest hurdle to a national healthcare program is a national conversation to get all parties to commit to a practical solution.

It was reinventing the wheel in Obamacare to do the exact same things that SCIP already did. Medicaid is also like this. Most people under Obamacare could have gotten Medicaid before merely due to low income levels.

What ruined Medicaid was entirely abysmal reimbursement levels for physicians and medical centers. They simply cannot take more than a percentage of Medicaid patients and still pay operating expenses.

The only way to get a national healthcare system to work effectively is to get each party to work together in a beneficial symbiosis, not blame one or the other. And regardless of all of that, the patient themselves must do the hard day-to-day work to slowly but surely improve their own health.

A physician cannot do much in 9 minutes. An employer cannot always be checking to see that the employee is wearing personal protective gear to avoid accidents. The insurance company can send an RN to check your vitals to make sure your blood pressure is controlled, but if the patient stops taking their BP medicine, then it will go right back up.