E-Cigarettes Poised to Save Medicaid Billions

[mr_bones]

Hi all!

One of our awesome customers shared this insightful article with us, and it sparked some great discussion with the smoktek staff! We're excited to hear your thoughts!

Unlike traditional nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), such as gum or patches, e-cigs mimic the physical routine of smoking a cigarette. As such, e-cigs fulfill both the chemical need for nicotine and physical stimuli of smoking. This powerful combination has led to the increasing demand for e-cigs-8.2% use among nondaily smokers and 6.2% use among daily smokers in 2011.1

The game-changing potential for dramatic harm reduction by current smokers using e-cigs will flow directly into lower healthcare costs dealing with the morbidity and mortality stemming from smoking combustible cigarettes. These benefits will particularly impact the Medicaid system where the prevalence of cigarette smoking is twice that of the general public (51% versus 21%, respectively).


Based on the findings of a rigorous and comprehensive study on the impact of cigarette smoking on Medicaid spending, the potential savings of e-cig adoption, and the resulting tobacco smoking cessation and harm reduction, could have been up to $48 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012.2 This savings is 87% higher than all state cigarette tax collections and tobacco settlement collections ($24.4 billion) collected in that same year.

Click here to read the full article!

 

[Cigarman]

Very interesting; wonder how the government will balance all the monies it could save in Medicaid vs all the monies it gets from Big Tobacco lobbyists.
I wonder too if there will come a time when we'll see Cancer Societies/Groups come out in support of e-cigs - since many cancers are still incurable, there's been a considerable effort since the 1960s to focus on prevention, rather than wait for a cure; hence no more cigarette ads on tv, the encouragement of women over 35 to get yearly mammograms, development of vaccines to prevent viruses which are "carriers" of some cancers, and so on (thank you, Ken Burns). That sort of support would be kind of major for the e-cig industry. Not sure how not classifying e-cigs as smoking cessation devices would impact all that though.

 

[Teach]

Fantastic article! Thanks for sharing.

 

[mr_bones]

Fantastic article! Thanks for sharing.

It's my pleasure, Teach!

 

[liblue1]

Thank you for sharing this....very interesting...
Conclusion
As shown in this study, the potential savings to Medicaid significantly exceeds the state revenue raised from the cigarette excise tax and tobacco settlement payments by 87%. As such, the rational policy decision is to adopt a non-interventionist stance toward the evolution and adoption of the e-cig until hard evidence proves otherwise. While cigarette tax collections will fall as a result, Medicaid spending will fall even faster. This is a win-win for policymakers and taxpayers.

 

[mr_bones]

Thank you for sharing this....very interesting...
Conclusion
As shown in this study, the potential savings to Medicaid significantly exceeds the state revenue raised from the cigarette excise tax and tobacco settlement payments by 87%. As such, the rational policy decision is to adopt a non-interventionist stance toward the evolution and adoption of the e-cig until hard evidence proves otherwise. While cigarette tax collections will fall as a result, Medicaid spending will fall even faster. This is a win-win for policymakers and taxpayers.

Absolutely, liblue1! It's a win-win for every informed person looking to do the right thing!

 

[Cigarman]

Absolutely, liblue1! It's a win-win for every informed person looking to do the right thing!

Ditto I really hope they consider this in the coming years.