ARE WE NUTS? COUNTING ON OUR VICES TO KEEP US HEALTHY AND ALIVE

FUNDING HEALTH CARE WITH CIGARETTES

Insurance Companies are not a part of “We the People”. They should not have a seat at the table to determine how the congress or the President should deal with our people’s health care. They are in business to make money from our health insurance premiums. They don’t care if we get health care coverage. They care about how much money they can make.

I’ve always wondered about how we try to fund programs on such things as our vices. For example, the targeted and specific taxes placed on packs of cigarettes for various things. The fact that we would fund health care with taxes on cigarettes is obscene, amoral and lacking intelligence. Can we think beyond short-term funding? Can we project into the future and what is sensible? Sometimes we get what we pay for. In this case, using cigarette taxes to pay for good programs is just plain mindless.

What if people stop smoking? Then, who will pay for our health care? How will we pay for the other things that are paid for with cigarette taxes already? What if we continue to set ourselves up to count on people to smoke? As the funding needs increase, it will be necessary to want the number to increase of smokers. This is ridiculous, don’t you think? To count on our vices to keep us healthy and alive? Sounds like sick-thinking to me.

Watch the "related" movie clip on the site that you can go directly to by hovering over my post title.

JOHN CONYERS of Michigan has a bill that needs the support of “We The People”. The following is taken from his web page.

H. R. 676, “The United States National Health Insurance Act,”
Or “Expanded & Improved Medicare For All”

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 2003, Representative Conyers first introduced HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act (USNHI). This bill would establish a unique American universal health insurance program with single payer financing. As a publicly financed, privately delivered health care system that improves and expands the already existing Medicare program, it would be available to all U.S. residents, and all residents living in U.S. territories.

The goal of the legislation is to ensure that all Americans will have access, guaranteed by law, to the highest quality and most cost effective health care services regardless of their employment, income or health care status. They would receive all medically necessary primary care, dental, mental health, prescription drugs, and long term care services by the physician of their choice, with no restrictions on what providers they could visit. With 47 million uninsured Americans, and another 50 million who are underinsured, the time has come to change our inefficient and costly fragmented non-system of health care. The end of John Conyers web page excerpt. From the link:
http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_hr676.htm

Is children's health care funding all smoke?

By Justin Thompson

(AXcess News) Washington - When Sen. Jim Bunning, R-KY., spoke on the Senate floor Thursday, it came as no surprise that he argued against expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, as did many of his Republican colleagues.

But Bunning, the two-term senator from the Bluegrass State, objected to more than just the idea of a "government-run health care system."

He has a problem with the bill's funding: namely a proposed 61 cent increase in federal taxes on tobacco products.

"The tobacco tax funding mechanism is an irresponsible way to pay for children's health care," he said. "The increased tax is fundamentally unfair to my state and the surrounding states."

But the government should worry about more than just the bill's equity. Raising the federal excise tax, he said, would drive away the source of the program's funding by pressing Americans to quit smoking.

The American Cancer Society estimates that for every 10 cent rise in the tobacco tax, 4 percent of smokers over 18 quit.

"If we were honest, and truly wanted to fully fund SCHIP spending with a tobacco tax, the federal government would have to encourage people to smoke," he said…
From the link:
http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/12555

Sicko - the movie's web page:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/dvd/
Sicko is out on DVD. I know there are people who simply won't watch this movie because they don't like Michael Moore. I like him. Some people like Bush. I don't. It seems that people who like Bush don't like Michael Moore.