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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (114034)	6/16/2008 7:15:30 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

KT, >BTW, who is paying the extra health care costs for employees and customers and the extra fire risk in their insurance premiums. Capitalism doesn't do well with allocating these kinds of resources.< I hate to go down this road because I've lost friends and family to cancer from smoking. However, in purely economic terms, smoking saves society a bundle. The prevailing wisdom is nonsense because it only counts the increased cost of healthcare for smoking related illnesses (more left wing trash). It doesn't count the cost of many extra years of Social Security, Medicare, nursing homes, and the costs of all the non smoking related diseases we all get sick and eventually die from anyway by living longer. What costs more, getting lung cancer at 50 and dying at 53 after 3 years of expensive treatment etc... or collecting SS until you are 80, having a wide assortment of ailments related to normal aging and having medicare pay for them all those years, finally succumbing to age and needing around the clock care in a nursing home etc... Don't bother. I'll tell you. It cost massively more to take care of my non-smoking grandmother than my deceased grandfather that smoked and died of cancer. The argument for eliminating smoking is purely about wanting our loved ones to be with us longer.