Republicans Defend Tobacco Giants from Sick Children
WASHINGTON-In keeping with Oscar Wilde’s adage that one cannot be too careful in the choice of enemies, congressional Democrats have chosen wisely and well.
Are there two industries in America toward which the public has more animosity than tobacco and managed-care health insurance? They make money either by making people sick (tobacco) or by limiting treatment for those who already are (managed care).
The logic of raising tobacco taxes and curtailing well-documented overpayments to managed-care companies that cover some Medicare patients, then using the funds to provide insurance to children in poor and working-class families, is better than politically perfect. It boosts public health by reducing smoking. It spares taxpayers billions now wasted on propping up corporate insurers rather than treating Medicare patients.
Which is, perhaps, one reason President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress are opposing with increasing stridency what started out as a bipartisan no-brainer: An expansion of coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that was long envisioned to be part of the reauthorization of the program this summer.
Bush began the ideological war against the children’s insurance program-which was crafted in part by Newt Gingrich and passed in the 1990s with broad bipartisan support-a few weeks ago. The president declared SCHIP to be a scary step toward “a federalization of health care” that would lead to “worse medicine.” In fact, states-not the federal government-run the children’s insurance program and typically contract for care with private managed-care insurers. These are the very same private insurers on whom Republicans lavished billions in taxpayer subsidies when they wrote the Medicare drug legislation and sundry other schemes to give the insurers more Medicare business generally.
But put aside, for a moment, this breathtaking inconsistency. Because that isn’t the whole story.
Just as it is hard to find two industries that have put profits ahead of the public welfare more consistently than Big Tobacco and Big Insurance, it would be difficult to find more loyal Republican campaign contributors. Though tobacco companies now give far less to congressional candidates than they have in years past, the industry still donated about $3.5 million in 2006-with 73 percent of it going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks contributions to federal campaigns. Likewise, 60 percent of the $7.6 million in contributions from health services companies and health maintenance organizations went to Republicans in 2006.
With friends like these, why worry about a few million kids who don’t have insurance?
What started out as the president’s ideological bomb-throwing has escalated with the usual Republican complaints about taxes and the alleged Democratic assault on “free-market Medicare plans.” House Republican leader John Boehner accused Democrats of “hiking taxes on working families,” though the only families affected would be those that include smokers.
The House bill on children’s insurance would finance the increase in coverage in part with a 45-cent a pack hike in the current federal cigarette tax. In the Senate measure, the tobacco tax would be increased by 61 cents a pack. Confiscatory? No, healthy.
In May, the Institute of Medicine said that “increasing taxes on cigarettes is one of the most effective ways to decrease smoking, particularly among adolescents.” The institute recommended that Congress increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes “by at least $1 a pack, and index the tax to inflation.” Hiking cigarette taxes not only would help cover kids without insurance. By reducing smoking, it would also make other kids-and adults, for that matter-healthier. And it would save taxpayers billions in future Medicaid and Medicare expenses to treat smoking-related diseases.
As for reducing excessive payments to private Medicare managed-care plans-proposed by the House, but not the Senate-that, too, is better than shoveling billions into the coffers of the private insurance industry. Since the start of managed care in Medicare, proponents have argued that private plans would reduce costs. But the opposite has proved true. According to both government and private studies, Medicare managed care now costs taxpayers about 12 percent more per patient than it would to treat the very same patient through traditional, government-administered Medicare. Managed care in Medicare is no “free market,” as Boehner contends. It’s a free lunch.
And it also happens to be just the sort of donor indulgence voters sought to stop when they put the Democrats in charge.
Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group
From Grumpy Lion:
Just how disconnected and delusional the Republicans are comes clear in remarks by Elizabeth Dole, Republican Senator from North Carolina, speaking about funding the SCHIP children’s health insurance program:
Senator Dole. . . called the legislation “not only the right policy, but it’s the right thing to do.” Nevertheless, she said the cigarette tax increase to pay for it was all wrong, predicting that her home-state tobacco industry “may collapse altogether” if the Senate passes the bill.
As an ex-smoker, let me ask why that would be a bad thing, Libby. Tobacco kills over 400,000 people a year in this country alone, and costs tens and tens of billions of dollars in health care. I think Libby’s logic is that we have to take care of children’s health so the tobacco companies will have someone to kill when the children grow up.
Cigarettes already have sin taxes imposed on them. If you’re REALLY trying to go after the actual causes of the U.S. health crisis (the actual HEALTH crisis, not the HMO crisis) then tax the fast food products.
That’s right, a sin tax on Big Macs, and a BIGGER sin tax on Happy Meals (bigger because of the additional psychological baggage the target market must later deal with). Oh, and corn syrup. Hey, we could even make the system work a little smoother if we just take the corn syrup taxes right out of the subsidy checks!
We have cartoon characters telling kids to fill their faces with poison (part of a Complete Breakfast[TM]) and people are screaming tax the cigarettes. Yes, cigarettes are bad, but they are NOT the major cause of the recently skyrocketing incidences of pediatric diseases like diabetes.
Target the real villain, not any ole’ windmill that looks suspicious.
The government must be stopped from “federalizing health care” because it will make medicine worst.
But, the government can and is encourage to make perpetual war because the federal government can protect the people.
Reject this conservative non-sense.
Right on, neomunk — anything that contains “high fructose corn syrup” or is fried should be subject to a federal tax whose revenues go directly toward health care, not just for kids but for everyone, the uninsured, those who are getting screwed by HMOs, etc etc etc. The exemption from sales tax for food should be limited to things that are actually FOOD.
Another item that should be taxed to pay for health care is any political contribution over $100 at 90% rate.
Or we could do the really right thing and enact universal single-payer health care that would leave no one out and save us a third to a half of our national health care bill.
HR 676, from the excellent John Conyers.
How many industries are only for profit at the cost of health etc ? All of them. With the classes of humans in USA and most of the world we have some problems. Owners….profit profit profit…
Management….profit and not work too hard
Workers.. work work work and drop dead
Unable to work and not owner… drop dead soon class due to health care.
So here is the American way…born in a health plan
owned by x y and z.
grow up eating at fast food joints owned by x y and z
work for x y and z
buy smokes from x y and z
pay for some health insurance to x y and z
die and pay for costly coffins etc since many funeral homes are owned by ……….x y and z
be burial on lower ground with a simple stone while x and y and z all are buried on high ground with bigger stones
bill brown
Hey most of the smokers are poor and working-class people who can’t afford any more taxes. This entire plan is nothing more than a sound good plan that won’t make a bit of difference. You want to help children than implement a national health care system. It’s a win-win deal in that not only will you be helping the children but you will be helping their parents also.
I agree with neomunk — target the fast food industries. But it doesn’t go far enough. Taxes on meat that are as high as the taxes on cigarettes would be a great way to make everyone cut down on the amount of animals that they eat. Which would be a win-win for the humans and the animals and the environment. And animal consumption has to be as bad as smoking as far as health goes.
I like Senator Gravel’s consumption tax. Trying to raise taxes on cigs, oil, or any other harmful substance has NEVER worked. Why? Because all it takes is a few carefully placed bribes to our representatives and the tax bill gets waylaid and destroyed. The superich are even managing to get around mandatory labeling. Sure, these oligarchs can easily pay a consumption tax on food, but they will also have to pay a consumption tax for their luxury cars, mansions, private jets and other assets when their corporations are no longer considered persons and they are unable to count these assets as tax exempted corporate ones.
Where would X.Y.Z. shop for their foodstuffs?
Is there a separate source for good, clean, and healthy food that is restricted to wealthy buyers only?
I don’t disagree with neomunk on taxing fast food (or saturated fats, more appropriately, but I would not call food the “real villain,” since a 2004 Duke University study found that “Cigarettes cost families, society $41 per pack.”
Consequently, a tax of anything less than, say, $30 a pack should rightfully be seen as a subsidy to cigarette smokers.