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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (34345)	5/12/2005 10:46:34 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

LOL. You must've read the Harvard economist's analysis of the positive and negative externalities of smoking that I posted here (I think it was this thread) a month or so ago. Harvard economist Kip Viscusi came up with these costs and benefits (per pack): Costs Cost of second-hand smoke to nonsmokers, $.16 Cost to gov't of extra medical care for smokers, $.55 Cost to private health plans, $.14 Lost tax revenues from shorter life-expectancy, $.40 Social cost of extra sick leave for smokers, $.01 Cost to society of fires caused by smoking, $.02 TOTAL costs: $1.28 per pack Benefits Reduced cost to government and private insurers of nursing home care for elderly smokers due to shorter lives, $.23 Reduced cost of government and private pensions to smokers due to shorter lives, $1.19 TOTAL benefits: $1.42 per pack Total net benefit: $.14 per pack, implying that we should be subsidizing smoking, not taxing it. Interestingly, at a pack a day, a smoker costs government and private health insurers about $21 per month for extra medical care according to Viscusi's numbers. If the state health insurer's $40 surcharge better reflects the costs than do Viscusi's estimates, then his 14 cent net social benefit becomes a net social cost of about 49 cents a pack, fairly close to the 60 cents a pack average tax in the US. Or is that too much information. ;-)