k wrote:

terratogen wrote:
I don't have more sympathy for a sick kid than for someone with lung cancer.

And I do, because the one of the two got their lung cancer by conscious choice.

The kid probably has more than one person to take care of him, while the smoker is on their own. If the kid jumps out of a tree and breaks his ankle, does this conscious choice mean the kid deserves less sympathy? Or should the fact that he was just a kid having fun warrant sympathy? You'd expect adults to know better, however in many ways people never outgrow recklessness. It's the smoker's buck afterall, that should be why those taxes should go to treat his health. Working parents can be taxed for their decision to have sickly, reckless children who are a burden to society.

And as for your other comments, I agree that there's no philosophical difference between taxing cigarettes because they're unhealthy and taxing, say, junk food, because it's unhealthy. In general the right to abuse yourself only extends so far as it doesn't affect other people. Smoking (and obesity and alcoholism) have social impacts that do affect everyone. Therefore it's sensible to have those who are causing these negative effects pay a slightly higher share to offset them. In general, these issues should all be handled by the insurance system, because the premiums for a self abuser (of any sort) will be higher than for someone who treats themselves well. Unfortunately, the insurance system is all fucked up in this country, and a lot of people aren't paying into the system, thus reducing the pool of available funds, so we have to find that money elsewhere.

If they have to pay more to offset their social harm, why should that go to pay for someone's fucking kid? This raised cost should correlate to the actual harm being done.
Having kids and not being able to cover the financial burden also affects other people, and in a myriad more important ways than smoking affects other people.

Are you anti insurance? It only works because a vast number of healthy people are paying for the small number of sick people. There isn't any other way it can work. So, am I, a generally healthy young person, being robbed by all the old sickies? It's a point of view I've heard. It's a cost I'm willing to pay however, because the system doesn't function otherwise. The alternative is everyone pays for their own health care directly, with no cost sharing. This of course means that people who've had some bad luck, die. Period. One may certainly argue in favor of such a system, so long as they don't shy away from the facts of how it works.

The cost of YOUR insurance or your children's insurance should probably not come from smokers. Smokers should pay more for it, and they should get what they pay for.

As I've said, I do think there's a difference between a 50 year old lifetime smoker with lung cancer, and a kid who needs annual checkups and can't get them because his mom works at Wal-mart. I'm not talking, in general, about kids with leukemia here... I'm talking about regular poor kids getting basic preventative care. I absolutely don't think a cigarette tax is the best way to make that happen, but in an imperfect world, I'm willing to take what I can get.

Of course it's moot since, as you indicated at the start of all this, Bush is going to veto it.

There is a difference, the kid has two parents who are shirking their responsibility on a group of people who they have no direct connection to. Why not tax video games... That's a bit closer. There's enough of a bullshit case to be made that they harm society... and video games are more likely to influence kids than smokers are. I agree that there should be some help to parents who can't get/afford insurance... but I still feel that this shared cost should come from other working parents, not some random exploitable schmuck. Maybe the kid got cancer because the parents never had the house checked for radon... Let's get those self abusing smokers to take the tab. Bullshit. There are better ways, and I for one am glad that this is getting vetoed (and so is Vile).

RE: Senate Panel Approves Huge Tobacco Tax To Fund Child Healthcare