Smoking and socioeconomic class

[Rippounet]

3 minutes ago, A wilding said:

However as the smokers die younger, the state needs to spend less money on their pensions (also still at least partly paid by the state) and on the infrastructure needed to support elderly people.

We specifically were discussing healthcare costs. The overall cost to society is a slightly different discussion. 

And careful, the idea that smoking ultimately saves society money originated in... tobacco companies. And is morally repugnant if you understand what the calculations imply: among other things that retired people cost money. To reach such a conclusion requires accepting a number of assumptions or premises that are... very very wrong. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Early age deaths are very sad, I'm sorry I joked about it.

I wish for everyone to live long and healthy lives and drain every last penny we can out of the retirement pensions and government trusts lol.

[A wilding]

13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

And careful, the idea that smoking ultimately saves society money originated in... tobacco companies. And is morally repugnant if you understand what the calculations imply: among other things that retired people cost money. To reach such a conclusion requires accepting a number of assumptions or premises that are... very very wrong. 

I agree of course. I thought the moral dimension was clear enough without me being explicit - I forget that tone does not come across when you are just using the written word.

[Alarich II]

3 hours ago, A wilding said:

However as the smokers die younger, the state needs to spend less money on their pensions (also still at least partly paid by the state) and on the infrastructure needed to support elderly people.

The counterpart to this being that smokers also pay less taxes and contribute less into the pension funds. if for example you get lung cancer or a cardiac seizure somewhere between 45-50 you are very likely to miss out on income during your peak income years, which also translates into taxes, consumption, contribution to social security etc. etc. not to speak of the income reduction of those family members having to care for you.

Of course, a lot of that will also depend on the system of social security in place. But my guess is that if health insurance companies could place a premium on smoking (or a reduction for proven non-smokers), the difference would be significant.

 

 

[A wilding]

In the UK if you buy a pension with a lump sum on retirement then it will cost you less if you smoke. It is a cliche that it is the one time that you want to be an obese heavy smoker with a heart condition.

[Alarich II]

3 minutes ago, A wilding said:

In the UK if you buy a pension with a lump sum on retirement then it will cost you less if you smoke. It is a cliche that it is the one time that you want to be an obese heavy smoker with a heart condition.

So you actually have to save for yourself and then buy into the pension-scheme on your retirement? Very different to our system, where the basic old age insurance uses the current contributions to pay out the current pensions, it's basically a generational contract, we pay those who are pensioners now and hope there are enough people paying for our pension when the time arrives. Of course there are private saving schemes as well but many of those tend to suck due to the current low interest rates.

[A wilding]

It's complicated.

There is a standard state pension everyone is paid by the government. This was originally intended to be enough to support anyone, but over the years has been whittled down somewhat, most notably by gradually upping the age at which it starts being paid.

On top of that, many people have a company pension as a job perk. These were originally typically "defined benefit" pensions where you were guaranteed a certain pension on retirement. However these have now mostly been phased out and replaced by "defined contribution" schemes where you get a lump sum on retirement that you use to buy a pension from a commercial company. However, there being a captive market, these pensions drifted over time towards being rather poor value, so some years ago the laws were changed to give you more flexibility (e.g. you can put the money in the stock market and live off the dividends).

Originally company pensions used to be a middle class thing, but recently the government has started to require all companies to provide them, presumably with the long term aim of phasing out the state pension. However if you are not very well paid then these company pension schemes are often poor value, with much of the money being soaked up in costs. Even if they were better value then they would be unlikely to add up to enough to buy you much of a pension.

 

[Jen'ari]

On 5/16/2020 at 2:40 PM, butterbumps! said:

I stopped smoking about 5 years ago, but was a pretty heavy smoker throughout undergrad and grad school.  I don’t miss it at all, and haven’t been tempted to start again.

The best way to describe it is that for some people (I was one), the nicotine creates an itch such that you need nicotine to relieve it.  Like I don’t think it makes you feel good so much as the withdrawal makes you feel shitty.  So smoking after a break (like when you wake up, after you eat) ends up feeling like the best thing in the world, because it’s started to leave your system, and then it helps you get back to zero.

Thanks for the explanation, I kind of get it but very glad I never started.

It seems to help when people are stressed from what I’ve seen in others too, and some people seem to quit for ages then start again, I’m glad you fully overcame it .

[Martell Spy]

Pretty grim topic, but smokers don't just suddenly die and let the state off from all expenses, or at least not always or usually. They start to need oxygen delivered to their home. They have multiple ER visits and hospitalizations. 

[Rippounet]

Damn I finally just had to take those 30 seconds to google this shit...

Quote

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/07/16/128569258/the-friday-podcast-death-saves-you-money?t=1589825880805

A decade ago, Philip Morris commissioned a study that found smokers in the Czech Republic were actually saving society money.

A big part of the savings: Smoking tends to kill people while they're still young, saving society the long-term costs of caring for them as they get older.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this finding blew up in the company's face.

Newspapers around the world picked up the story: "Smoking Cuts Elderly Costs, and Elderly"

The company furiously backtracked: "We understand the outrage that has been expressed and we sincerely regret this extraordinarily unfortunate incident."

Activists used the study's findings against the industry — and, paradoxically, sought to undermine the study's conclusions.

 

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/18/news/tobacco-giants-analysis-says-premature-deaths-cut-costs-in-pensions-and.html

Otakar Cerny, a spokesman for the Czech Health Ministry, dismissed such arguments. "No government can calculate with reports like that," he said. "The health minister leads an irreconcilable struggle with smoking so that Czech citizens live long and healthy lives."

In a statement released in Washington, Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said, "Philip Morris's cost-benefit analysis of the consequence of smoking represents not only bad economics but a callous disregard for life."

Michelle Di Leo of the British Lung Foundation asked, "What will Philip Morris argue next, that we should put people down at 50 because it would save us all a lot of money on health care?"

 

It's all a terrifying example of how corporate propaganda can insidiously enter the "public consciousness."

[Fury Resurrected]

9 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Sure, the earlier life illness are far more burdensome on "out of pocket" and private insurance expenses. While later "end of life" expenses are largely borne by Medicaid. Those earlier expenses may be concentrated over shorter duration, but it's a terrible impact to households I'm sure.

I'm reminded of a workmate who smoked and we just lost at 56. He worked and paid into our insurance fund for decades. Very fit guy, he was a competitive softball player, never sick or missed work. And within just a few short months he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and was gone. Very sad, great guy liked by all, he only made it 2-3 months from his last day on the job, r.i.p.

This is not an isolated story, I've seen it with others over the years and I venture others could tell of similar stories. The point is that while dying early is surely tragic, it also means they are not going to be long term users of the insurance. Their lifetime costs are finished, and they will have never even made it to Medicare or nursing homes or any other future healthcare costs that would be used in the equation of what ones lifetime healthcare costs would be. Those end of life healthcare costs are quite costly as well.

Again, I was talking about the situation of my own grandparents. I know what Medicaid is and out of pocket expenses she’s are- and I know what all their expenses had been because again, these were three of my own grandparents. None of them had crippling out of pocket expenses- but the cost for treating lung cancer and emphysema under any metric was astronomically higher than the routine checkups the other two had before dying at home on the farm. 
 

Not everyone ends up in a nursing home. None of my grandparents (including the one living one) have gone, which is part of why I have the knowledge I do about their care costs. 
 

And as someone who has lost family from smoking related illness and watched their spouse and children cry about it- I’d really appreciate you toning down the fucking glee over smoking deaths.

[Jo498]

I am a fairly "aggressive non-smoker" but I think that in many countries we are close to or already at diminishing returns in the "war on smoking". Germany is probably 15-20 years behind the US and some southern and eastern European countries 15 years behind Germany, so some of the latter might have some work still to do but in Germany any more measures would be patronising and infringe more on individual liberties than I'd find acceptable. (When I was a kid/teenager in 1980s West Germany, smoking was legal from age 16, students! had designated smoking areas on schoolyards and most teachers would only tell off kids obviously younger than 16, parents smoked in cars with small children getting the second hand smoke, every restaurant, pub or club was simply full of smoke, they usually did not have any non-smoking rooms, and most of this was still the case until around 2000.)

As for socioeconomic class, I'd rather work on reducing general socioeconomic tensions, divisions and stark differences in wealth/income than go for more patronising.

[Impmk2]

I think in Australia we've found the point of diminishing returns as far as pricing goes - we're currently at around A$40 a pack (about $30 US at current exchange rates). Smoking rates have been hovering around 13% for the last few years despite the steadily growing tax rate increase. But less young people are taking it up, so that will probably slowly change over time.

[sologdin]

the withdrawal makes you feel shitty

it ramps up for the first 72-96 hours or so, from mild irritation through labor-intensive prickishness to regular lumpenized antisocial nihilism, culminating in full cessation psychosis wherein newly minted non-smokers lose their minds in assuming that their own apparently irresolvable corporeal crisis is erga omnes apocalyptic. i was accordingly only able to quit because i spent two weeks in the wintry north while someone watched my kid so i could bugger off without concern, away from ordinary contexts.

[A True Kaniggit]

11 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

I think in Australia we've found the point of diminishing returns as far as pricing goes - we're currently at around A$40 a pack (about $30 US at current exchange rates). Smoking rates have been hovering around 13% for the last few years despite the steadily growing tax rate increase. But less young people are taking it up, so that will probably slowly change over time.

So like $1 a cigarette?

[Impmk2]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

So like $1 a cigarette?

Yeah more than I guess. I haven't smoked even casually in years, but some of my friends complain. No idea how they afford it.

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

I haven't smoked even casually in years, but some of my friends complain. No idea how they afford it.

Yeah I doubt I'd quit, but I'd have to cut back quite a bit if it was $30 a pack.

[Guest]

Re: quitting smoking, it was actually kind of easy for me to quit cold turkey, after about a pack a day habit for about 15 years. Of course, what prompted me to quit was my dad, grandfather, and uncle all dying of cancer within about 18 months of one another, so I was probably more motivated which made it easier (I'd tried to quit numerous times before that and failed every time). I will have a cigar about once a year, and I've switched mostly to vaping or edibles for my wacky tobaccy.

Anecdotally, it seems like kids are much more likely to pick up vaping than cigarettes these days, which isn't great, but better than cigarettes. The discussion over flavored vapes is stupid. Flavored alcohol sells like hotcakes and no one complains about alcohol being marketed to minors.

[DMC]

23 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

The discussion over flavored vapes is stupid. Flavored alcohol sells like hotcakes and no one complains about alcohol being marketed to minors.

Thanks Obama.