Bradley on tobacco
Topics: Health, Regulation
24 Mar 1995
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
On 3/22, while in the process of proposing a quintupling of the federal
excise tax on cigarettes from $.24 to $1.24 per pack, Senator Bill Bradley
remarked "Just look how despicable the targeting of the tobacco companies
is," ! Of course, he did not mean his own capricious abuse of power used to
extract $12G/year (his estimate) from one minority for the purposes of
buying votes from his constituents, rather he meant that it is immoral for
tobacco companies to advertise.
His co-idiot Sen. Lautenberg (both Dems, BTW) estimated it would raise
$20G/year to "pay for Medicare and Medicaid costs from tobacco-related
illnesses." (quoting the Post). Now, there is perfectly trivial way to
force smokers to pay their own costs: dump Medibufus coverage for smoking
related illness. Even if smokers are insured privately, they are still
paying the costs in a fair way. The fact that this simple answer is not
being implemented lays bare the whole lie about covering smoking related
costs. The truth is that the money would not go to Medibufus. It would go
into the general treasury. Even if it went to Medibufus, it would only have
the effect of lowering the rest of the budgetary allocation and would still
have the effect of going to the general treasury. Even if it really did add
to Medibufus, it would go to cover all illnesses, and not just smoking
related. Even if it went just to smoking related illness, it would be a
transfer from people who have already paid the cost via private insurance to
those who have not and still not fairly be forcing people to pay for their
induced damages. It would punish people for being responsible by trying to
cover their costs with insurance. It would reward people for not being
insured, and punish them less for smoking, as they could fall back on other
people paying their Medibufus bill.
This bill has nothing to do with smoking and everything to do with
capricious taxation. Find a minority, brandish them sinners, raise their
taxes, buy midnight basketball courts to keep the social workers employed,
then tell the rest of the voters how you are keeping their taxes low and
fixing the crime problem.
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