Slashing Healthcare Costs, Tip #1: Stub Out Cigarettes

How can we cut health care costs? You’d think it was a hard problem to address—with all this moaning and finger-pointing in Congress and the mainstream media. But, as it turns out, scientists and researchers are finding easy answers to this question.

Take, for example, two studies released last week on the effects of secondhand cigarette smoke. Both studies looked at the same data: a compilation of individual studies that followed more than 24 million people in the US, Canada, and Europe who were living in states, provinces, and municipalities that had passed laws banning cigarette smoking in public places like bars, restaurants, and workplaces.

Researchers at the University of Kansas School of Medicine found that, in the first year of a ban on smoking in public places, the incidence of heart attacks in the general population fell by 17%. By year three, heart attack rates fell by 26%. That’s not only statistically significant, it’s indicative of a major public health crisis caused by secondhand smoke. A nationwide ban on smoking in public places would not only prevent 150,000 heart attacks in the first year alone (think of all the pain and suffering we could prevent), it would save massive amounts of money.

And that didn’t even look at the myriad other illnesses caused by cigarette smoke: lung cancer, throat and stomach cancers, hypertension, asthma, migraines—the list goes on and on. If the data on heart attacks is so dramatic, we can expect equally steep reductions in these other expensive illnesses, too.

The second study, done by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, looked at the same data as the first study, but analyzed it slightly differently. The UC researchers found the same 17% decrease in heart attacks in the first year of public smoking bans, but found an astounding 36% drop in heart attacks by year three.

Right now there’s no bill in the House or Senate that calls for a nationwide ban on cigarette smoking in public places, but there should be. Currently, only 17 states and about 350 cities ban smoking in bars, restaurants, and workplaces, which means that only about 40% of the US population can dine out, listen to music, or go to work in a smoke-free place. A partial ban exists in about 14 other states, but the remaining 19 states—primarily in the South and Midwest--have no ban at all.

We should heed the information that scientists provide us. Remember, just because the Bush administration did its best to undermine the work of scientists and researchers doesn’t mean we need to continue operating in ignorance. We have one easy way to save millions, if not billions, of dollars currently being spent on health care, and we’re choosing to ignore it. That’s just stupid.