Tobacco companies to fight tobacco tax increase measure

~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."

Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~

On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:
~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."



Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.


(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~


Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!




http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...s_for_the_kids


Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007


Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.


So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:30:10 -0700, (Paul Berg)
wrote:

~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

see, inter alia, Gresham's Law.

Big tobacco is watching its market share decrease as a function of
tobacco taxes.

On Aug 18, 7:11 am, wrote:
On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:



~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."

Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.

(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~

Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret...

Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.

So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical bills (we are
in-effect, subsidizing big tobacco) not to mention that more people
die every day as a result of tobacco than the Iraq war times 10. The
mistake being made is not taxing enough. For tobacco to just break
even with the misery they cause it should be over $3 a pack tax.
Figure it out. Don't forget tobacco is a narcotic and people that
smoke are not just 'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS! Phillip Morris
plans on spending 3 million to convince voters they should continue to
subsidize ADDICTS.
They couldn't pass a tax increase the state legislature (to many
already on the Reynolds payroll or simply addicts themselves like
Susan Morgan - R district 6 whom I have had personal contact with and
know her to be a liar and related to the tobacco lobby somehow.

I don't know what Paul Berg is doing rolling his own personal
complaint about using credit scores for figuring your insurance. I
figure if you are a low life and don't pay your bills, you would
probably be pretty stupid elsewhere so why not use that as a
barometer. I pay my bills on time and Paul Berg should too instead
of whining about his insurance rates.

Now follow this logic: "As a group, smokers are less affluent than
nonsmokers, and a poor
person's spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his
or her income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly regressive." So the way I understand it, ADDICTS are less
affluent so we should subsidize their addiction not to mention just
how STUPID it is to smoke so according to we should
be subsidizing stupid ADDICTS.

On Aug 18, 1:31 pm, MEG wrote:
On Aug 18, 7:11 am, wrote:





On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:

~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."

Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.

(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~

Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret...

Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.

So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical bills (we are
in-effect, subsidizing big tobacco) not to mention that more people
die every day as a result of tobacco than the Iraq war times 10. The
mistake being made is not taxing enough. For tobacco to just break
even with the misery they cause it should be over $3 a pack tax.
Figure it out. Don't forget tobacco is a narcotic and people that
smoke are not just 'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS! Phillip Morris
plans on spending 3 million to convince ...

read more »- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Gee MEG I happen to disagree with you.
Further I think yer fulla ****.

So much in fact here you go.
I bet ten dollars to every pound of your horse ****
you can bring on tobacco is not narcotic.


So bring it on MEG show the Betten Mann up!

There it is...
Ten dollars against every pound of your horse****
tobacco is not narcotics....
And you can hold the stakes in your MOUTH !


Meg say's
Figure it out. Don't forget tobacco is a narcotic and people that
smoke are not just 'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS! Phillip Morris
plans on spending 3 million to convince ...


So it's already figured out. MEGS fulla ****.
A bigoted Liar posting in a smoker forum to tell
them another pack of bull**** & Lies.

Alt.smokers is about puffing on tobacco.
Maybe the quitters groups are for your type persona.
Possibly look for a liars & bull****ter's forum.

So with your piece spoken
"'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS!"
Smoker's reply back

MEG your in fact an an Asshole.


Here's proof:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotics

The term narcotic ( ) is believed to have been coined by
Galen to refer to agents that benumb or deaden, causing loss of
feeling or paralysis. The term is based on the Greek word
(narcosis), the term used by Hippocrates for the process of benumbing
or the benumbed state. Galen listed mandrake root, altercus (eclata)
[1] seeds, and poppy juice (i.e. opium) as the chief examples.[2][3]

In U.S.legal context, narcotic refers to opium, opium derivatives, and
their semi-synthetic or fully synthetic substitutes "as well as
cocaine and coca leaves," which although classified as "narcotics" in
the U.S. Controlled Substances Act (CSA), are chemically not
narcotics. Contrary to popular belief, marijuana is not a narcotic.[4]

Many law enforcement officials in the United States inaccurately use
the word "narcotic" to refer to any illegal drug or any unlawfully
possessed drug. An example is referring to cannabis as a narcotic.
Because the term is often used broadly, inaccurately or pejoratively
outside medical contexts, most medical professionals prefer the more
precise term opioid, which refers to natural, semi-synthetic and
synthetic substances that behave pharmacologically like morphine, the
primary active constituent of natural opium poppy.



http://www.incb.org/pdf/e/list/46thedition.pdf

Bring your tobacco is narcotics link when you
return or admit you lost your bet.
& scram asshole.

On Aug 18, 12:28 pm, wrote:
On Aug 18, 1:31 pm, MEG wrote:

On Aug 18, 7:11 am, wrote:

On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:

~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."

Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.

(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~

Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret....

Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.

So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical

...

read more »

Hey ass-hole, nicotine is a narcotic and quite possibly the most
addictive drug there is. ADDICT!

MEG wrote:

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical bills (we are
in-effect, subsidizing big tobacco) not to mention that more people
die every day as a result of tobacco than the Iraq war times 10. The
mistake being made is not taxing enough. For tobacco to just break
even with the misery they cause it should be over $3 a pack tax.
Figure it out. Don't forget tobacco is a narcotic and people that
smoke are not just 'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS!

Then use the tax money - ALL OF IT - for Free Rehab.

Phillip Morris
plans on spending 3 million to convince voters they should continue to
subsidize ADDICTS.

How about Twinkies this time around?

MEG wrote:

Hey ass-hole, nicotine is a narcotic and quite possibly the most
addictive drug there is. ADDICT!

It is Not a narcotic. A narcotic is so called because it induces narcosis.
However, Nicotine IS Addictive.

On Aug 18, 4:34 pm, MEG wrote:
On Aug 18, 12:28 pm, wrote:

On Aug 18, 1:31 pm, MEG wrote:

On Aug 18, 7:11 am, wrote:

On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:

~

News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.

Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.

Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.

"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."

Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.

Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.

"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J..L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.

"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."

Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.

Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.

(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp.. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.

Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.

~

Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret...

Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.

So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical

...

read more »

Hey ass-hole, nicotine is a narcotic and quite possibly the most
addictive drug there is. ADDICT!

So MEG the ignorant asshole is back!
Got the proof that tobacco is a narcotic....

No..then you lose...you own me ten bucks.
Obviously you want to take me up on my offer.

Come back with the proof asshole...
Smart talk and sassy replies are all you' ve got.

Back up your big Ignorant mouth with proof.
Give us a link to the narcotics like I gave you.

20 bucks next tiem through without the link.
Or just scram and run with your tail between
your legs lil darling.

Maybe you can find an easy group to passify
your need to bull****...

Come back to reality MEG your too far gone.
What a stupid ass....

Betten_Mann beat you loser.

MEG wrote:
On Aug 18, 7:11 am, wrote:
On Aug 18, 9:30 am, (Paul Berg) wrote:



~
News article from The (Portland) Oregonian - August 18, 2007
Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to
reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy
children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns
in state history.
Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with
the state Elections Division to form the "Oregonians Against the Blank
Check" committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris
USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its "Stop the
Measure 50 Tax Hike" campaign.
Last year, tobacco companies spent roughly $100 million to fight
cigarette tax increases and smoking bans on ballots in several states,
according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of
Southern California. They failed to defeat tax increases in South Dakota
and Arizona but succeeded in Missouri and California. Tobacco companies
spent $65 million in California alone, said Cathy Kaufmann, policy
director for the nonprofit Children First of Oregon, which is part of
the coalition backing the measure.
"They're going to bring a lot of money to the state, and they're going
to try to make this vote go their way," Kaufmann said, "but we're pretty
confident Oregonians aren't going to be fooled."
Measure 50 would amend the state constitution to increase cigarette
taxes by 84.5 cents a pack, raising an estimated $153 million for the
current two-year budget and $233 million for 2009-11, most of it to
provide health care for more than 100,000 Oregon children. Democrats who
control both arms of the Legislature couldn't muster the votes to pass a
straight-up cigarette tax increase, but they had enough Republican
support to put the issue before voters.
Opponents call the proposal unsustainable, unfair to smokers and
inappropriate to put into the constitution. They say the law gives
legislators flexibility to spend as much as $68 million on other health
services.
"Our contention is that it's not so much about insuring kids as it is
about providing blank checks for various interest groups," said J.L.
Wilson, a spokesman for the R.J. Reynolds campaign.
"When you see the money doesn't go to healthy kids, perhaps it's not
appropriate to be saying it's a healthy kids measure."
Wilson said he expects his campaign to spend $3 million. "Of course," he
added, "we reserve the right to spend more."
Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris, wouldn't comment on campaign
strategy or how much the company plans to spend in Oregon.
Last week, a group of supporters calling itself the "Healthy Kids
Oregon" coalition said it had raised $700,000 in cash and commitments
from hospitals, nurses, unions and health groups.
(Why Sure ! They want job protection guarantees.)
through taxation laws.

Spending by cigarette makers could rival or top that of Liberty
Northwest, the workers' insurance company that spent a record $5.6
million in 2004 on a ballot measure to get rid of rival Saif Corp. That
same year, doctors and others in the health care industry spent $5.2
million trying to limit medical malpractice awards.
Last fall, insurance companies ponied up $5 million to successfully
fight a ballot measure that would have banned the use of credit scores
in setting insurance rates.
~
Using credit scores to set rate's only make sense to idiots.
Check with your company's...If they do that cancel them.. period.

Your paying habits have no reflection on driving ability,
homeownership
or health. A poorer statistic to use is wheather you brush your teeth
/ or not.

As a good measure you should change insurance companies every other
year.
Let them know they have to earn your business./ or out they go!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...25/buy_cigaret...

Buy Cigarettes for the Kids
By Jacob Sullum
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Politically, making smokers pay for children's health insurance is a
great
idea:
Everybody loves children, and everybody hates smokers. But once you
get
beyond the popularity contest, it's clear that financing an expansion
of the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) with a big increase
in the
federal cigarette tax is neither fair nor wise.
As a group, smokers are less affluent than nonsmokers, and a poor
person's
spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his or her
income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly
regressive.

A smoker stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray outside an office in
Brussels
January 30, 2007. Four European Union countries, including Belgium,
have
already banned smoking in pubs and restaurants as European Health and
Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou unveils his Green
Paper on
tobacco. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir (BELGIUM)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Swedes Get a Nicotine Kick From 'Snus'
VIDEO: Stop Smoking with "Cues"
According to a Tax Foundation analysis, the Senate proposal to pay for
a
$35-billion SCHIP expansion by raising the federal cigarette tax from
39
cents to $1 a pack is the "least defensible alternative" because "no
other
federal tax hurts the poor more than the cigarette tax." The
foundation's
Gerald Prante calculates that "the burden of the proposed cigarette
tax hike
on the lowest-earning 20 percent of households is 37 times heavier
than it
would be if the government raised the money with the federal income
tax."
Some supporters of higher cigarette taxes argue that smokers should
bear a
disproportionate fiscal burden because they account for a
disproportionate
share of taxpayer-funded medical expenses. But researchers such as
Harvard
economist W. Kip Viscusi estimate that, if anything, smoking saves
taxpayers
money.
Because smokers tend to die earlier than nonsmokers, they do not
consume as
much health care in old age or draw on Social Security as much as
nonsmokers
do. Leaving aside Social Security savings, a 1997 study in The New
England
Journal of Medicine concluded that total health care spending would go
up,
not down, if everyone stopped smoking.
Even if smoking does, on balance, increase government outlays, a 1994
report
from the Congressional Research Service concluded that cigarette taxes
in
all likelihood already covered any external costs that reasonably
could be
attributed to smoking. Since then, the average cigarette tax (state
and
federal combined) has tripled, rising from 50 cents to $1.46, an
increase of
more than 100 percent in real terms. And that's not counting the price
hike
needed to fund the tobacco companies' settlement payments to the
states.
Relying on yet another cigarette tax hike could mean that the people
paying
for SCHIP's expansion will be poorer than the people benefiting from
it. The
current Senate bill would raise the family income cutoff for SCHIP,
currently 200 percent of the official poverty level, to 300 percent.
Some
legislators prefer a limit of 400 percent, which comes out to $82,600
for a
family of four.
A decade ago, SCHIP's supporters sold the program as a way of
providing
health coverage to children whose parents could not afford it but were
not
quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Now they are proposing
changes
that would make SCHIP resemble a middle-class entitlement.
President Bush is not the most credible opponent of a new federal
health
care entitlement, given his support for the exorbitant Medicare
prescription
drug benefit. But he is right to oppose SCHIP expansion and the tax
hike
that comes with it -- a burden that nonsmokers eventually will find
themselves bearing as the percentage of the population that smokes
continues
to dwindle (an explicit goal of higher cigarette taxes).
SCHIP expansion is especially worrisome in light of research by
economists
David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, who found that making publicly
funded
health care more broadly available tends to crowd out private
coverage,
encouraging people to decline employer-provided insurance or drop
coverage
of dependents. According to a 2007 paper co-authored by Gruber, "the
number
of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as much as the number
of
publicly insured rises."
This research suggests that much, if not most, of the money spent on
SCHIP
expansion would pay to cover children who already have insurance. That
does
not seem like a smart use of taxpayers' money, even if the taxpayers
are an
unpopular minority.

So up the tax ante's and the unborn already have special interest
rights
because the medical industry hates smokers ~ probably their # 1 source
of income
and give entitlements to themselfs in the form of insurance for those
who
can and don't pay.

Total Asshole Policy

So BoYa

So, big tobacco is spending millions to stop the tax increase saying
it is unfair

They have a point.

Fighting against a tax increase when already tobacco
costs US citizens 50 (B) Billion every year in medical bills (we are
in-effect, subsidizing big tobacco) not to mention that more people
die every day as a result of tobacco than the Iraq war times 10.

Really? Could you please back up your two statements:
1) tobacco costs US Citizens $50,000,000,000 every year in medical bills.

2) More people dies everyday as a result of tobacco that that or the
Iraq war times 10. ( I assume you mean that more US citizens die every
day than the number of total US Casualties times 10)

The
mistake being made is not taxing enough.

Why should it be taxed more? So that black markets can make more money
off of it?

For tobacco to just break
even with the misery they cause it should be over $3 a pack tax.

Perhaps. But what about the enjoyment people get from it? And do we
now institute "Misery tax?" Who gets to make that subjective judgment?
You?

Figure it out. Don't forget tobacco is a narcotic and people that
smoke are not just 'smokers' but are in fact ADDICTS!

Really? Everyone? So the 2 cigars a week I have qualifies me as an
addict? Under what criteria?

Phillip Morris
plans on spending 3 million to convince voters they should continue to
subsidize ADDICTS.

I'm not understanding you logic (or lack of) here. Since when has a
non-smoker ever subsidized me? I would be interested in knowing.

They couldn't pass a tax increase the state legislature (to many
already on the Reynolds payroll or simply addicts themselves like
Susan Morgan - R district 6 whom I have had personal contact with and
know her to be a liar and related to the tobacco lobby somehow.


*yawn* it always resorts to Ad Hominem attacks with these types.

I don't know what Paul Berg is doing rolling his own personal
complaint about using credit scores for figuring your insurance. I
figure if you are a low life and don't pay your bills, you would
probably be pretty stupid elsewhere so why not use that as a
barometer. I pay my bills on time and Paul Berg should too instead
of whining about his insurance rates.

Now follow this logic: "As a group, smokers are less affluent than
nonsmokers, and a poor
person's spending on cigarettes represents a much bigger chunk of his
or her income
than a rich person's. These facts combine to make cigarette taxes
highly regressive." So the way I understand it, ADDICTS are less
affluent so we should subsidize their addiction not to mention just
how STUPID it is to smoke so according to we should
be subsidizing stupid ADDICTS.


Poor people tend to smoke. Cigarette taxes will effect poor smokers.
And as you have said, it is addictive. May will not be able to quit.
So they now have less discretionary income for things like healthy food,
medical bills, etc.

Just like a "cranky, control freak tax" would do to you.