Smoking-Related Medical Care In '93 Estimated at $50 Billion; Costs More Than Doubled in 5 Years, CDC Study Says
Smoking-related illnesses cost Americans about $50 billion for medical treatment last year, or the equivalent of a $2.06 tax on a pack of cigarettes, according to a study released yesterday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</br></br>The CDC said the medical costs of smoking had more than doubled since 1988. Much of the increase is attributable to medical inflation and to the growing proportion of older people whose smoking habits are catching up with them, said Thomas Novotny, coauthor of the study and an assistant dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley. "This is the rock-bottom estimate of the cost of smoking," he said.</br></br>Researchers took the total U.S. expenditure on five "smoking-related medical conditions" - heart disease, emphysema, arteriosclerosis, stroke and cancer - and determined the amount of each attributable to smoking alone. They then calculated the costs of prescription drugs, hospitalization, physician care and home health care to treat those illnesses.</br></br>The total does not include, Novotny said, the cost of treating burns caused by cigarette-related accidents or the special medical needs of some babies born to smoking mothers. The study comes at a politically important time as Congress considers hefty cigarette tax increases to pay for health care reform. Four committees - two in the House and two in the Senate - have passed bills that would increase the current federal tax on cigarettes from 24 cents to as much as $2 a pack.</br></br>House and Senate leaders are attempting to meld the measures into single bills to be debated on the House and Senate floors.