Tobacco Documents Online

t'- A2 FR(DAY; JULY 8; 1994 THE WASHl.M16TUN'POST Smoking-Related Medical Care In '93 Estimated at $50 Billion Costs More Than Doubled in 5 Years, CDC Study Says By Dana Priest wa.nor®eost s,aaw&W Smoking-related illnesses cost Americans about $50 billion for medical treatment last year, or the equivalent of a $2.06 tax on a pack of cigarettes, aocording to a study re- leased yesterday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said the medical costs of smoking had more than doubled since 1988. Much of the increase is attributable to medical inflation and to the growing proportion of older people whose smoking habits are catching up with them, said Thomas Novotny, coauthor of the study and an assistant dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley.'This is the rock-bottom estimate of the cost of smoking," he said. Researchers took the total U.S. expendi- ture on five "smoking-related medical condi- tions"-heart disease, emphysema; arterio- sclerosis, stroke and cancer-and determiaed the amount of each attributable to smoking alone. They then calculated the costs of pre-. scription drugs, hospitalization, physician care and home health care to treat those illnesses. The total does not include, Novotny said, the cost of treating burns-cansed by cigarette- related accidents or the special medical needs of some babies born to'smoldng mothers. The study comes at a politically important time as Congress considers hefty cigarette tax in- creases to pay for health care reform. Four committees; two in the House and two in the Senate-have passed bills that would increase the current federal tax on cigarettes from 24 cents to as'much as $2 a pack. House and Senate leaders are attempting to meld the measures into single bills to be debat- ed on the House and Senate floors. So far, legislators from tobacco states have managed to wrangle concessions from some health committees to cut back on proposed cig- arette tax increases that were designed to pay for insurance coverage for low-income people. In the House Ways and Means Commit- tee, for example, a•subcoauaittee recom- mendation that the cigarette tax be in- creased by $1.25 a pack was eventually reduced to 45 cents and phased in over five years. The reason: the much-needed vote of Rep. Lewis F. Payne Jr. (D-Va.). "It was a cave-in to the tobacco industry," said Cliff Dougfas; chief lobbyist' on the to- bacco tax issue for the American Cancer So- ciety. "L.F. Payne poised himself as the 20th vote they needed" to pass the bill. Advocates of increasing the tax say it is only logical to target such an obvious and identifi- able health risk. Opponents say cigarettes are but one of~ many deleterious habits and shouldl not be unfairly singled out for taxation. `There are so few people who are abso- lutely perfect,° said Thomas Iauria, spokes- man for the Tobacco Institute, the industry's public refations arm. "What about someone who is overweight or who drinks or engages in high-risk sports.Y" Of the CDC report, he said, "it is unblcely . those are true social costs." Cigarette taxes al- ready add $13.3 billion to state and federal cof- fers, more than enough to pay the cost of ined- icaf care for smokers in the publicly funded Medicare and Medicaid programs, Lauria said. Novotny said the new CDC study oonclud- ed that the cost of smoking-related illness to Medicare, Medicaid other publicly federal' health programs was $22 billion last year. Of the $50 billion spent in 1993 on medi- cal treatment related to smoking, about $29 billion was spent on hospital care, $15:5 bi1- lion on physician care, $4.9 billion for nurs- ing homes, $1.8 billion for prescription drugs and $900 million for Medicare and Medicaid payments for home health care. In April, the New England Journal of Med- icine surveyed studies of the medical cost's of smoking and concluded that the total may have reached $65 billion in 1985, if lost pro- ductivity is included. "Our eyes glaze over when we hear about productivity " said Lauria. "We're humans. Not cattle." _. ..... ,.~:~<