Note another angle on the healthcare costs. The ground truth reality is likely the same argument tobacco companies made. Heart diseases often kills people when they are younger, and have consumed less in retirement or medicare funds. So like smoking, it’s possibly a net savings to governments for healthcare costs.
I do not think this is entirely accurate. Lung cancer in smokers hits unusually young people because, well, they are smokers. Heart disease is a disease of old age and accelerating it somewhat through an unhealthy diet would have complex effects. However, making matters even more complicated, ultraprocessed foods also promote cancers and obesity—the latter is definitely a huge healthcare burden which does not kill people immediately.
This is hard to model since there can be a shift from a disease that kills slowly to one that kills quickly and early (dementia to lung cancer), but you can have also the opposite shift (e.g. from a non-disease state to chronic COPD and frailty preceding death).
All we can say for sure is that the harmful effects of smoking and junk food diets may be offset to some extent. More so for smoking than junk food.
Either way, it would appear the consensus is that “in high-income countries, lifetime health care costs are greater for smokers than for non-smokers, even after accounting for the shorter lives of smokers”
I understand the issue wasn’t healthcare costs but total cost to the government.
It means if you were playing ’simGovernment” from a bird’s eye view, and you do not care about the fate of individuals, you are trying to maximize the government’s power and revenue, this might be a profitable tradeoff.
You can abstract it as a “card” from an options menu you can select:
[beef subsidy]
+ farmer votes
- average lifespan
+ healthcare costs
- total cost per citizen
NPV of choice: + <some number> per citizen
You can think of this case where as a government official or a gamer playing the “government” as a side your interests aren’t aligned with the population’s happiness or lifespan as a case of misalignment.
Also, while your link claims that lifetime healthcare costs are greater for smokers, it does not claim it is a consensus, but specifically mentions that many people claim the opposite. And that’s before getting to Gerald Monroe’s point.
Unclear. The overwhelming majority of healthcare costs for the median American come in the last 6 months of life. The “least costly” method of dying is usually passing away in your sleep out of the blue.
The types of diseases correlated with Big Mac consumption or smoking are not usually “pass away in your sleep without much medical intervention.” They are more likely to be the types of diseases that carry with them long-term, relatively high cost interventions (dialysis, heart surgery, gastric bypass, and other obesity-related interventions.) Same with smoking—significant levels of medical care are allocated to treating people with lung cancer.
While its possible some of those savings are recouped by moneys otherwise sent as social security payments or whatever, it seems unlikely they are a net savings.
This is to say nothing about people who might retire early because of preventable disease (shortened health spans where they provide society with useful work) and other reasons obese people might not produce as much net output that they otherwise would in the alternative where they did not consume so many Big Macs.
Note another angle on the healthcare costs. The ground truth reality is likely the same argument tobacco companies made. Heart diseases often kills people when they are younger, and have consumed less in retirement or medicare funds. So like smoking, it’s possibly a net savings to governments for healthcare costs.
I do not think this is entirely accurate. Lung cancer in smokers hits unusually young people because, well, they are smokers. Heart disease is a disease of old age and accelerating it somewhat through an unhealthy diet would have complex effects. However, making matters even more complicated, ultraprocessed foods also promote cancers and obesity—the latter is definitely a huge healthcare burden which does not kill people immediately.
This is hard to model since there can be a shift from a disease that kills slowly to one that kills quickly and early (dementia to lung cancer), but you can have also the opposite shift (e.g. from a non-disease state to chronic COPD and frailty preceding death).
All we can say for sure is that the harmful effects of smoking and junk food diets may be offset to some extent. More so for smoking than junk food.
Either way, it would appear the consensus is that “in high-income countries, lifetime health care costs are greater for smokers than for non-smokers, even after accounting for the shorter lives of smokers”
https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-17-economics/17-2-the-costs-of-smoking
I understand the issue wasn’t healthcare costs but total cost to the government.
It means if you were playing ’simGovernment” from a bird’s eye view, and you do not care about the fate of individuals, you are trying to maximize the government’s power and revenue, this might be a profitable tradeoff.
You can abstract it as a “card” from an options menu you can select:
[beef subsidy]
+ farmer votes
- average lifespan
+ healthcare costs
- total cost per citizen
NPV of choice: + <some number> per citizen
You can think of this case where as a government official or a gamer playing the “government” as a side your interests aren’t aligned with the population’s happiness or lifespan as a case of misalignment.
Lung cancer affects old people.
Also, while your link claims that lifetime healthcare costs are greater for smokers, it does not claim it is a consensus, but specifically mentions that many people claim the opposite. And that’s before getting to Gerald Monroe’s point.
Unclear. The overwhelming majority of healthcare costs for the median American come in the last 6 months of life. The “least costly” method of dying is usually passing away in your sleep out of the blue.
The types of diseases correlated with Big Mac consumption or smoking are not usually “pass away in your sleep without much medical intervention.” They are more likely to be the types of diseases that carry with them long-term, relatively high cost interventions (dialysis, heart surgery, gastric bypass, and other obesity-related interventions.) Same with smoking—significant levels of medical care are allocated to treating people with lung cancer.
While its possible some of those savings are recouped by moneys otherwise sent as social security payments or whatever, it seems unlikely they are a net savings.
This is to say nothing about people who might retire early because of preventable disease (shortened health spans where they provide society with useful work) and other reasons obese people might not produce as much net output that they otherwise would in the alternative where they did not consume so many Big Macs.