Why Medicare is Now Helping Smokers with Quitting the Habit

Anti-smoking ads are not there just because some folks up there in Washington think its not nice see yellowish teeth and fingers

. Instead, smoking in itself is costing Americans more than just their external beauty. In this article, we will discuss why the Medicare program bothered to go out of its way.

A person who smokes today will rarely feel the adverse effects immediately. Instead, all the damage that is done by heavy smoking shows up only in the smoker's latter years. Furthermore, as soon as the symptoms show, reversing them is often difficult, if not impossible. More than that, the economic toll of smoking does not only refer to medical bills.

Consider a smoker who puffs a pack per day. If a pack costs about five dollars, a smoker would have spent about USD 1825, just for smoking, every year. That does not include the breath mints and other products used to mitigate the effects of smoking. If a person continuously smokes for twenty straight years from age 20 to 40, at the same rate, with cigarette costs assumed to be constant, would have had enough to buy a new home worth almost three hundred grand at 65.

On the state level, smokers, based on actuarial tables, are more costly to insure than non-smokers, due to the many health risks that are associated with the smoking habit. On the average, smokers are fifty percent more like to contract a disease than a non smoker, and that a heavy smoker is likely to die about ten years earlier than his non-smoking peer. This means higher medical costs for Medicaid and Medicare, and premature life insurance claims.

Lastly, with the aging of most of the post-war baby boomers, an even more serious fiscal problem will ensue. It is bad enough that the government is now scrambling to find ways to pay social security and healthcare benefits when most of America retires, and a smoking public will only make it worse.

Why Medicare is Now Helping Smokers with Quitting the Habit

By: Sammi Jonesman

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