Last year about this time, I was struck by the diametrically opposed message of two otherwise unconnected stories that aired back-to-back on CBS News. The first profiled the state of West Virginia's efforts to curb their obesity epidemic. State health officials were wringing their hands about the likelihood of shorter lifespans for their state's citizens, who are partaking in increasingly unhealthy diets that contribute to obesity-related illnesses. The second story profiled the pending financial meltdown of General Motors, saddled with retiree health benefits driving them towards bankruptcy since retired employees are now living longer and running up higher health care bills. Does anybody else see the circular logic these two messages send us?
I was inspired to write this diary after engaging in a comment thread of a diary last evening about smoking. The talking point of smoking's "cost burden on society" was flaunted liberally in defense of higher cigarette taxes. Certainly this premise has been so many times that most people don't even bother to question its authenticity. Kip Viscusi, a Harvard economist who is probably not a political ally to us Kossacks, is not one of them.
Here's a link to a report Viscusi wrote on the topic: http://www.brookings.edu/...
as well as an excerpt from a 1997 interview he gave on the PBS special "TechnoPolitics" that sums up his position rather succinctly (please excuse my blockquote ignorance):
""Because it's risky, [smoking] has adverse health effects that increase medical care costs of people when they are younger. But, in addition, smoking kills people," says Viscusi. "And smokers tend to die after they have contributed to Social Security and Medicare, but before they've collected all of their Social Security pension and Medicare benefits. As a result, there is a cost savings at the end of smokers' lives, and a cost increase earlier. But, on balance, the cost savings offsets the cost increase, so that smokers offer a net financial gain to the government...society saves almost $30 billion a year in Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits that would otherwise have had to be paid out, had smokers lived."
While admittedly morbid, his position is very persuasive in laying waste to the cost-benefit meme of raising cigarette taxes to recoup financial losses incurred by government due to smoking, and probably also applies to similar arguments made about obesity "costing society" untold billions annually. So why are so many people engaging in such a widespread misinformation campaign to convince the public that "unhealthy lifestyles" are more expensive than "healthy lifestyles"?
It's a complex marriage, but it basically boils down to a quid pro quo between insurance companies and government seeking short-term profits at the expense of long-term financial solvency, and for that matter, at the expense of the truth. Since insurance companies are only on the hook for medical expenditures for working-age Americans, their interest is to endorse (and increasingly mandate) "healthy lifestyle choices" that allow them to save money on insurance for employees, but then foist a lifetime of health care expenses onto Medicare to accommodate a geriatric population living longer lives.
Government, in turn, gets cover to justify increasing tobacco taxes (and when that goose starts laying fewer golden eggs, raising taxes on "Big Transfat" in its various forms) every time they need to fill a budget hole. This is clearly a budgetary ticking time bomb if Viscusi's thesis is correct, but since when has government at any level put long-term fiscal stewardship ahead of instant-gratification expedience?
In making this point, I'm not suggesting that we should all adapt three-pack-a-day Marlboro habits or consume chicken-fried steaks and banana splits three times a day to save Social Security and Medicare. I'm neither a smoker or a mass consumer of "junk food" myself, so I have no self-interest here. But I do balk at the fact that false data is being used to justify tyrannical measures by government and employers to hijack the consumption choices of individuals. Americans of all political stripes seem to be willing stooges of whatever the insurance industry/government study talking point of the hour is regarding "healthy lifestyles".
Smoking has been public enemy #1 thus far, and an arm's length of new legislation has been enacted in the last decade to "protect us from ourselves." But to some extent, those efforts have been working too well. Cigarette sales are way down, meaning government will desperately need a new bogeyman to take center stage. As I previously opined, "Big Transfat" is likely to be the winner, and "drastic measures" will be foisted upon a public that will at first be skeptical, but after several years of special interests (ahem, insurance companies, cough) pounding their studies into our brains, said drastic measures will be accepted. I have little doubt the nanny-staters are racking their brains as we speak trying to dream up the chow hound's equivalent to secondhand smoke....and they'll come up with it....and most of us will end up believing it.
So what does this all mean? Basically, we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. If we smoke our Luckys and scarf down our fried chicken, we'll be lectured by public health officials and our employer's insurance company about the "epidemic" we are part of contributing to the least healthy and shortest-lived generation in memory. If we respond to that by kicking our bad habits and living off only the things we can grow in our gardens, then we'll be healthy 65-year-olds declared the villains for "living too long" and bankrupting Medicare, leaving us as long-term Alzheimer's patients with no way to pay the bills. Since there are no good answers, can't we just let people live their damn lives and consume their own poisons in peace without the lectures and without demands for new excise taxes that will merely be used to finance another corporate welfare package for whatever minimum-wage employer wants to move into our city?