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Eh!

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See, I can use "neh," but I can't respond with "eh" -- makes me feel too Canadian. Works for you, though.

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Eh!


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See, I can use "neh," but I can't respond with "eh" -- makes me feel too Canadian. Works for you, though.

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I don't read neh and eh as Canadian, I read them as Battle School.

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since the last I knew was that there were class action lawsuits to try and get money for the state's medical costs of caring for these individuals

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primarily paid for via state tax payer dollars because most insurance doesn't have enough coverage to meet the cost of cancer, etc.

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Thanks for the linky, Dag, to the most recent tobacco lawsuits of 2002 - I have not heard about any individual vs tobacco company suits in the last couple of years - just state/class action - which the "common" wisdom here in this state at least is that standard medical insurance does not cover the cost of caring for tobacco related diseases in individuals - hence, the class action lawsuits so that states could have some money to put into the health care system, and into smoking cessation programs -

You might be interested in the following link, which is where my "common" knowledge of the associated costs come from -

If you can't trust a lawyer and her research teams, who can you trust?



Link to Quote Below

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B. The Damages Caused By Defendants' Unlawful Conduct

16. The intended and foreseeable effects of the conspiracy are several and far- reaching, including but not limited to, increased medical costs to others including the State of Washington , the use of tobacco products by minors in violation of state law, and the failure of the industry to develop and market "safer cigarettes" and other innovative products.

17. A foreseeable and intended consequence of defendants' conduct has been to unjustly enrich the defendants at the expense of Washington's health care system, the state health care authority, state workers' compensation funds, and ultimately, all Washington residents and taxpayers:

a. Approximately 50 million residents of the United States smoke cigarettes, and another 6 million use smokeless tobacco products. Nationwide, tobacco related deaths are a national tragedy: More than 400,000 deaths per year in the United States are tobacco related.

b. In Washington, almost 850,000 adults are smokers. Each year, 8,000 of them die prematurely, each losing on average 11.5 years of life. Another 75,000 Washington adults use smokeless tobacco.

c. Health care costs in the United States are hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Tobacco-related health care costs are estimated to be more than seven percent of total health care costs, and for 1993, tobacco-related health care costs were $50 billion in the U.S.

d. The defendants' conduct has wrongfully shifted to the State of Washington and others costs directly attributable to tobacco usage and exposure that should have been borne by the defendants, including but not limited to, increased Medicaid payments and increased health care insurance premiums for public employees. In addition, the Department of Labor & Industries ("L&I"), as trustee for the Workers Industrial Insurance Program, must assess higher premiums as a result of work-related injuries that are aggravated due to tobacco use by some workers.
18. A further effect of defendant's conspiracy is the targeting and eventual addiction of minors and young people. Recognizing the pernicious addictive nature of their products, the tobacco industry seeks to addict new customers among the most impressionable group, the youth of the nation. The defendants must constantly addict new customers in order to ensure their continued profits.

a. According to a 1994 U.S. Surgeon General's Report, 3,000 children become regular smokers each day. Eighty-two percent of adults who have ever smoked had their first cigarette before age 18 and more than half of them had already become regular smokers by that age. Reports published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that anyone who does not begin smoking in childhood is unlikely to begin. For the 3,000 children who become regular users of tobacco products everyday, projections indicate that 1,000 of the 3,000 new smokers will die prematurely as a result of their tobacco use.

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Most medical insurance does cover cancer. Most policies have maximum out-of-pocket limits per year.

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Dag - section D seems pretty clear to me that the costs for tobacco related illnesses falls on the taxpayer backs - how are you reading it?

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Aren't the medical costs of cancer the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.?

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In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five federal courts and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9–2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more likely than other debtors to experience lapses in coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick....

Illness begot financial problems both directly (because of medical costs) and through lost income. Three-fifths (59.9 percent) of families bankrupted by medical problems indicated that medical bills (from medical care providers) contributed to bankruptcy; 47.6 percent cited drug costs; 35.3 percent had curtailed employment because of illness, often (52.8 percent) to care for someone else. Many families had problems with both medical bills and income loss.

Families bankrupted by medical problems cited varied, and sometimes multiple, diagnoses. Cardiovascular disorders were reported by 26.6 percent; trauma/orthopedic/back problems by nearly one-third; and cancer, diabetes, pulmonary, or mental disorders and childbirth-related and congenital disorders by about 10 percent each. Half (51.7 percent) of the medical problems involved ongoing chronic illnesses.

Our in-depth interviews with medical debtors confirmed that gaps in coverage were a common problem. Three-fourths (75.7 percent) of these debtors were insured at the onset of the bankrupting illness. Three-fifths (60.1 percent) initially had private coverage, but one-third of them lost coverage during the course of their illness. Of debtors, 5.7 percent had Medicare, 8.4 percent Medicaid, and 1.6 percent veterans/military coverage. Those covered under government programs were less likely than others to have experienced coverage interruptions.

Few medical debtors had elected to go without coverage. Only 2.9 percent of those who were uninsured or suffered a gap in coverage said that they had not thought they needed insurance; 55.9 percent said that premiums were unaffordable; 7.1 percent were unable to obtain coverage because of preexisting medical conditions; and most others cited employment issues, such as job loss or ineligibility for employer-sponsored coverage.
Health Affairs Journal

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Costs
No health insurance plan will cover every expense. To get a true idea of what your costs will be under each plan, you need to look at how much you will pay for your premium and other costs.

Are there deductibles you must pay before the insurance begins to help cover your costs?

After you have met your deductible, what part of your costs are paid by the plan?

Does this amount vary by the type of service, doctor, or health facility used?

Are there copayments you must pay for certain services, such as doctor visits?

If you use doctors outside a plan's network, how much more will you pay to get care?

If a plan does not cover certain services or care that you think you will need, how much will you have to pay?

Are there any limits to how much you must pay in case of major illness?

Is there a limit on how much the plan will pay for your care in a year or over a lifetime? A single hospital stay for a serious condition could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You can't know in advance what your health care needs for the coming year will be. But you can guess what services you and your family might need. Figure out what the total costs to your family would be for these services under each plan.

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Lifetime Maximum
Health care plans usually set a limit on how much they will pay for an illness or injury. This limit is called a "lifetime maximum benefit." When the limit is reached, the health care plan no longer pays for medical care.

Each plan sets its own limit, and the dollar amount of the limit varies widely. Obviously, a health care plan with a high lifetime maximum benefit amount is particularly important for someone coping with a chronic disorder.

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A. Employment-Based Group Insurance
The most common way of accessing health insurance is through employment. Many employers offer group health insurance benefits to their employees. These benefits are usually available to spouses and children of employees. Some employers pay the entire premium for their employees' coverage; others require a contribution from the employees' paychecks. In general based insurance is the most affordable type of coverage.

If a sick or disabled person is well enough to work, or if the spouse of an ill person can work, employee health benefits can help insure the cost of medical care. However, such plans often limit the coverage they offer. Some group plans may refuse to insure a sick person to prevent an increase in premiums owed by the group. Other employer plans may impose pre-existing condition exclusions. That is, they will not pay for the medical care of an illness which was diagnosed or treated prior to employment. Other plans impose waiting periods during which an employee pays premiums but is not insured. In addition, group plans rarely pay the entire cost of medical care. A standard "major medical" indemnity plan pays 80% of medical care costs after an annual deductible paid by the insured person.

C. Individual Disease Policies
Many insurance companies offer health insurance for coverage of a particular disease, such as cancer. Or, coverage may be offered for a small number of diseases. Such policies do not pay for the cost of medical care for an illness other than the ones specified in the policy.
Individual disease policies are not generally considered to be a good buy. It is difficult to predict in advance what illness an individual may contract. In addition, most insurance companies will not issue health insurance for a particular disease if the person is already suffering from that illness.

D. Long-Term Care Insurance
A relatively new type of insurance product, long-term care insurance pays for the cost of extended illnesses which do not require a hospital level of care. These policies may be sold on an individual basis or as part of a group insurance plan. Usually they insure the cost of nursing home care or a combination of nursing and home health benefits. The cost of such coverage is tied to the age of the purchaser. Because long-term health care is expensive, premiums for long-term care insurance are high. Insurers lessen the cost of premiums by providing partial payment of long-term care costs, imposing waiting periods or elimination periods during which an individual is not covered, excluding care related to speific illnesses such as Alzheimer's Disease, excluding pre-existing illnesses, or requiring a period of hospitalization as a precondition for coverage. In addition, premiums are often pegged to increases in the cost of care, which can result in large increases after a policy is purchased.

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Medical insurance does not cover all the costs of medical care - and it is this extra cost which states' AG were trying to recoup (As far as I can tell)

Here's an interesting, if lengthy read - and gets at what mom was talking about, I daresay - after reading, I would also say that the tobacco companies are doing fine - no worries that hordes of flighty law-suit happy individuals will send them into bankruptcy -

Tobacco Litigation

[ February 26, 2005, 06:14 PM: Message edited by: Shan ]

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Medical insurance does not cover all the costs of medical care - and it is this extra cost which states' AG were trying to recoup (As far as I can tell)

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... primarily paid for via state tax payer dollars because most insurance doesn't have enough coverage to meet the cost of cancer, etc.

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Shan, I can't find the place in your quotation that says that if someone has health insurance, the state pays most of their costs if they contract cancer.

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Some group plans may refuse to insure a sick person to prevent an increase in premiums owed by the group. Other employer plans may impose pre-existing condition exclusions. That is, they will not pay for the medical care of an illness which was diagnosed or treated prior to employment. Other plans impose waiting periods during which an employee pays premiums but is not insured.

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Nothing posted has said it fails most of the time.

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Are you looking for a generalization?

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Hey, what do you got against us Canadians, eh?

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Are you looking for a generalization?

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No - I'm responding to one.

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Great link, Dag - I can use it for work, too, on the obesity related stats.

Page 33 relates to the cost of caring for tobacco related disease -

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One study showed health care expenditures caused directly by smoking totaled $50 billion and 43% of these costs were paid by government funds, including Medicaid and Medicare in 1993.28 These estimates of medical and other costs from tobacco may be low since costs associated with diseases caused by environmental tobacco smoke, burns from tobaccorelated fires, or perinatal care for low-birthweight infants of mothers who smoke 28 and indirect costs, such as work loss, bed-disability days, and loss in productivity, were not included.28 Tobacco costs to our society are best measured by the number of people who die or suffer illness each year because of its use. 27 As a result, the total economic burden of cigarette smoking may be more than $100 billion.

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Hmmm. I would expound on what I get out of this particular group of stats, but a wise soul has pointed out that if this were truly a thread about me learning to keep my mouth shut and listening, then perhaps I might want to exhibit that behavior or face the ribbing that will surely follow.

I think we may have to agree to disagree, Dag. Or either agree to be very specific or very general . . . Either way, I still take issue with my mother's statement that this country is being overrun by frivolous lawsuits by people who should have known better anyhow, while totally discounting the fact that the government foots a generous portion of that cost.

Go ahead - rib me for trying to get in the last word. I can take it!

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In "A Bill Bankrupt of Pity," E.J. Dionne [op-ed, March 1] claims that a recent study on bankruptcy found that half of bankruptcy debtors "said illness or medical bills drove them to bankruptcy." In fact, the study, "Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy," found no such thing. The number of actual debtors who said that illness or injury was even a significant cause of their bankruptcy was much smaller (28.3 percent). And many of those had quite modest medical bills and missed very little work.

To be able to claim that half of all bankruptcies had a medical cause, the authors had to include a number of dubious case categories, including bankruptcies caused by chronic gambling, alcohol and drug addiction, and birth or adoption, as well as all cases in which the debtor had paid more than $1,000 in medical bills over the two years leading up to the bankruptcy.

This last category is especially misleading. The debtors included in it did not have to claim that medical bills were a special problem, much less that such bills "drove them to bankruptcy." It was sufficient that they spent $1,000 -- hardly an unusual sum for a family over two years.

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