S-CHIP

[pecunium]

I am of a mixed mind on this.

1: I favor expanding healthcare. I think, honestly, it would be a good thing to have Medicare tweaked, and converted to a national health care (given that we already subsidise the present system with 200 billion in tax credits, to pay more, get less and have tens of million with no health care..., but that's all a different topic).

2: I am glad to see most people agree that kids ought to be covered (if for no other reason that a quick fix when the problems show up, and maybe the establishment of good habits both saves, and makes, money later).

3. It doesn't hurt that the veto/votes against make the present regime in the White House look more like the bastards they are.

But (had to be a but, because of that mixed mind): I don't think the present funding is the way to do it.

I have problems with sin taxes (honestly, I have problems with using the tax code to perform micro managements. Housing... Ok, because that's a leveller. Education, same thing. Encouraging the non-growing of soybeans... Not so much). If someone wants to buy booze, let 'em.

A tax to cover the costs of making sure the distillery is safe, no problem. A tax to discourage people from drinking by making it more expensive, not so much.

S-CHIP is built on a different idea. Smoking is bad (I'll grant that). Society, as a whole, is down on smoking (this isn't so bad). So we can soak the smokers to pay for something we want.

It's that last which bothers me. One, it's morally wrong to say, "we don't like what you do, so we're going to take your money; while leaving the thing you do legal."

Two, if this does what such taxes usually do (decrease the number of smokers), then the money will have to come from somewhere else.

There is a way the second can be avoided: the Government does things to keep the number of smokers, at least, constant.

I'd like to see someone just stand up and say, "We need to help kids. It will take money. "X" susbsidies/incentives/loopholes, are worth less than this is." Or just bite the bullet and say, "If we want this, we have to pay for it, the tax bite will go up by 5 cents per person."

Otherwise, we have to encourage smoking, accept that this is going to have rising costs, and diminishing revenues, or make smoking something the gov't encourages; for the sake of the children.

Comments

[yuripup.livejournal.com]

I think its an easier and less painful way to decrease smoking without taking as drastic a step as, say Prohibition did.

I find myself thinking of cigarette taxes as more charging the user for the full accounting cost smoking...and then moving the money they are paying to other programs as their health is already paid for (one hopes) from other revenue streams.

Nor do I think the "this is bad for you, but we won't declare it illegal" posture is quite nuanced enough to cover the very real issue of addition.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think its an easier and less painful way to decrease smoking without taking as drastic a step as, say Prohibition did.

At least Prohibition was honest. The way of which you approve is the gov't using the power of taxation to destroy: We don't like what you are doing, so we will make it too expensive to continue. It's also regressive.

The second part of your argument isn't valid here, because the money isn't being taken to pay for the cost of smoking, but rather a secondary program. So that program is either linked to smoking revenues, or somewhere along the way the system has to pay for it.

And, if it's a public good, the entire public ought to pay for it.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Cathie sometimes works at the local High Dependency Unit where it is not unusual to see patients who have just had their second limb amputated because of smoking related diseases being wheeled off the wards by their friends to smoke another cigarette.

I can see the attraction of soaking legal addicts from a revenue raising aspect - and where I Chancellor I doubt I'd have the balls to be honest about it - but our societies have a truly serious problem with all manner of addictions and taxation is not the way to solve those problems.

Assuming you want to solve the problems, which is a very big and probably unjustified assumption.

[yuripup.livejournal.com]

On the whole I am against regressive taxes and policies but I think in this case, unavoidable. And can be made less so with government sponsored quitting programs. A regressive tax that the poor can not avoid is to be shunned. One that is regressive but that is avoidable while saving the poor money is one I can live with.

I don't have a problem with using the governments power of taxation to destroy a market-in this case.

And I agree with you the politicians haven't defunded government spending on smoking care so they can replace that money with the smoking tax stream.

You also end up in the weird position of saying "Smoking bad, don't do it! Its so bad we'll make you pay more for it. Oh and by the way, here is the free health care that you paid for while smoking while you are sick from smoking." Must be a moral hazard or something.

I like your last point in theory, I haven't thought about it enough in practice to be willing to give up specific taxes for the public good.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm OK with raising the taxes on cigarettes for any and all reasons because smoking should be expensive. It should be a luxury. It's bad for you. I can tell you for sure that I would not have started smoking at age 13 if cigarettes had not cost the same 50 cents as my school lunch.

How much does a package of cigarettes cost in Canada? Aren't they up to about $10C/pack now? They were more than $7 last time I noticed, which was 12 or 15 years ago, I think.

Did you hear the Republican line on this, that -"Democrats want to levy a special tax on the lower middle class"-?

K.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that tying much of anything into some specific income resource is usually a less-than-stellar idea. It might work to advance the original sale, but ... whatever happened to the idea that a tax on the CA State Lottery would pay for the entire Public Education System? Not to mention the many multi-purpose tools that don't work really well for anything. But then, I have the impression that alcohol use and obesity/dietary factors are more solidly-established as health-damaging factors than tobacco-use. (I should note that, AFAIK, my HMO charges me a higher monthly rate because I am a smoker.)

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

One of the major problems I have is the Feds (Congress and our Maximum Leader) initiating programmes that are allegedly for the benefit of the several States without securing adequate funding, along with making State participation mandatory by hooking re-imbursement to continued Federal funding of other programmes.

The other side of this is the States buying into it, then whinging when the piper's fee is due. Aid to education is a good example. Under the Constitution, it's the business of the States. Now that the States have bought into it, it's the Feds business. The local politicians haven't the guts to say "no" and fund it themselves by increasing taxes.

State-supported colleges are an example of this. Most states charge a minimal fee for out-of-state students, to "encourage diversity in education." The problem is, the out-of-state fees are less than the state support per student. I suppose I'm a bit of a parochialist, but why should my tax money support some kid from Ohio's education (for example) at VMI or a Texan's support a Virginia kid at TAM? If the kid wants a military education, let him/her apply to one of the Federal military colleges or his state's military academy.

Ok, off the soapbox now.

:)