My mom is still unmarried and that don't make her no slut! You raise the price of smokes, how the fuck will I be able to buy them? My trailer is expansive to you know.

More of JustNonsense comentary if you don't mind hearing it.

My mon is still a slut (At least that's what Dad keeps saying), I pointed out that when she wasen't married, she was regarded as an "unmarried" slut.

Staying on topic;

Are smokes cigarettes?

Yeh smokes are cigaretes. Thats all cool.

Well this sounds pretty dumb, I havent read into the details but it just seems like a bit of political fancywork.

Nobody, but the smokers, make criticisms when taxes go up and they're generally seen as "bad people". So saying you'll tax them makes political sense.

Taxes is taxes. Smokers are not an infinite well to draw from. Programs for children and taxes on smokers are evaluating the goodness of children as higher than other people and the badness of smokers as lower. If we want to support healthcare you either cover everybody the same way or you cover nobody. I don't like half-ass in between measures. We should balance the budget and do it by an honest look at all incoming and outgoing moneys, not by a piecemeal "where can we get away with it?" approach.

smokers should pay more, but not only the children should get the money of it.

Who lives healthy should pay less on the other hand.

Who gets to draw the line between healthy and not healthy?

DISCLAIMER: I'M A NON-SMOKER

Having said that, in my state, they just outrageously raised the tax on cigarettes. Now people are dashing for the state line to buy cigarettes cheaper. The "you can't do that" police were notified. Now it's a misdemeanor to buy more than 22 cartons of cigarettes across the state line. Don't we live in America?

Personally, I'm not in favor of any taxation on an item that is cancer-causing and harmful to everyone's health. Why don't we just make marijuana legal and tax that too? We could use the revenue for drug rehabs. Ridiculous.

Are you saying we should remove the tax on cigarettes and keep on selling them? Or are you saying we should make them illegal altogether?

I would love for cigarettes to be banned. Since I live in the real world and that is not going to happen, I certainly don't think we should fund healthcare with taxation from cigarettes. It's oxymoronic. It doesn't make any sense. You have two forces that are working hard against each other. STOP SMOKING! No, Buy cigarettes for the children. STOP SMOKING! No, Buy cigarettes for the children. It's idiotic.

By the way, BNS, do you smoke?

Nope.

I agree that this particular law is stupid. And the politics are ridiculous. "Raise taxes for the children."

However, smoking really does increase the cost of healthcare. If we were to move to a socialized healthcare system, then it makes sense to get more money from those who are going to cost the most---at least to some degree. One way to do that would be to tax cigarettes. That way you aren't working against yourself. The revenue from cigarette tax would go to pay for the higher cost of the medical bills of smokers. If you stop smoking, that's fine, because then your medical costs would go down too, so nothing is lost. In the absence of a socialized medical system, I'm very much against taxing cigarettes.

Is that not proved statistically already? <edit repeat of bns>People who smoke end up using hospitals earlier and more, and this cost money to the taxpayer. So why not let them pay it via their habbit? Also acts as a motive to stop smoking, two birds with one stone.
I do guess it is regressive though; can of course compensate with other taxes.

BTW bit silly to say this funds the S-CHIP.. it is just another tax, not like the money has S-CHIP written on it..

First, I am COMPLETELY against socialized healthcare. And, I think the SCHIP would be taking a step in that direction. Taking people who have privatized insurance and making FREE insurance available to them is only going to drive UP the cost of private healthcare insurance. After all, how can the private sector compete with FREE. Therefore, I am AGAINST the SCHIP.

Having said that, I am a non-smoker and intend to remain a non-smoker. I have no doubt that in my lifetime, I could have my own set of healthcare issues and they will not be smoker related. If a smoker quits smoking, their healthcare issues don't radically decline. The damage is already done. I know of two cases where smokers quit ... it wasn't until they quit that their healthcare issues surfaced. So, with their healthcare costs rising, they would no longer even be contributing to their cost of care because they would no longer be buying cigarettes. Am I making sense?

I do agree that there needs to be another way to fund it.

So do people who:

-are fat
-eat junk food
-don't exercise
-are under too much stress
-play contact sports

I could go on and on. For every 100 people, you have a 100 different levels of risk when all factors are looked at.

Ok, you want to tax people who smoke. I want a very high tax rate placed on everyone under 50 who can't run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes and do 30 pushups and 40 situps. And yes, this includes the handicapped too. If they're handicapped, their health care expenses are probably higher. If their body composition is over 23% they pay even higher taxes.

While you're at it, slap a big tax on junk food, skateboards, and footballs and basketballs. People get hurt playing sports.

Or...

Everyone could just get out of this notion someone else is supposed to pay your health care, and buy it themselves.

You're exactly right!

Just out of interest, here in Australia, tobacco products are taxed extremely. A pack of 20 cigarettes costs close to $10AU (though packs of 20 are in the minority compared to packs of 25,30,40,50). The bulk of the taxes goes directly toward funding Medicare, our social health care program. I fail to see the controversy in this since tobacco also contributes heavily to the cost of Medicare, because as has been said, smokers get sicker.

Medicare is also funded by 1% income tax on everyone.

Medicare (unrelated to the USA usage of the word Medicare) is extremely successful and co-exists alongside private health insurance.

In terms of effectiveness, Australia's health care system beats the USA system hands down.

BTW, the bill has been vetoed by the president.

The House could have voted today to overturn the veto - they'd loose, but they'd have another two weeks before some deadline to tweak the bill into something that wouldn't get vetoed.

Instead, they've decided to wait two weeks until just before the deadline and vote to overturn the veto. This prooves they (Democrats) don't really want to get a bill out there that'll help poor kids. The reason it was vetoed is because this bill also funds people who already have insurance, middle class kids, and adults.

Nothing but dirty politics as usuall and no progress whatsoever.

That's something I can heartily agree with.

I was watching them go back and forth on CSPAN this morning. One of the Repubs asked the Democrat why not just vote on overturning the veto now, so they could have two weeks to put together a bill that would pass.

All he could give as an answer was that the two weeks would give them time to go visit emergency rooms to see how nasty it is.

What they really want is to vote, have the veto stand, and be able to say "look at those bad Republicans - bad bad Bush."

If they'd weed out the fat, the bill would (unfortunately) pass and no one would have to take their kids to the emergency room for the flu.