We are glad to present to our readers this addition to our Scientific Portal (in the “The Cost of Non Smokers to Society” section) of the study “Lifetime medical costs of obesity: prevention no cure for increasing health expenditure”, that covers both obesity and smoking.
One of the battle horses harnassed by the “public health” propaganda machine is that smokers and obese people “cost” to society because of their “lifestyle-related” “diseases”. The clear implication is that, were the targets to behave “properly” – that is, as prescribed by “public health” – those diseases would not occur, or they would occur far less.
That is false – if for no other reason, because it is unproven. People with the “correct” lifestyles are hit by those diseases too. But it is the cost notion in itself that is false. This study from Holland reveals that falsity, along with all the other studies in the section. It is the non smokers who – by far – cost society more, and smokers are forced to pay for them with their taxes. That is quite unfair according to the very rationale used against smokers: why should smokers pay for the super-costs of non smokers? If non-smokers want to cost to society, they better pay out of their own pockets! The argument does not sound so “fair” when it is used against those who vomit it, does it?
This study is an economic study as the author, Pieter van Baal, is an economist. His study tears apart the "evidence" that smokers are more expensive for society in health care costs compared to non-smokers. That "evidence" is the main reason for the politicians to vote for smoking bans, in the questionable belief that prohibition and social “denormalization” induces abstinence – think of the war on drugs, an abysmal failure. Smokers in particular cost less, as they have a claimed seven year shorter life expectancy – and thus save to society seven very expensive years of old age in hospitals and in other care costs.
Obese people too cost less than “healthy” people; smokers are the control group — and smokers are the least expensive of all 3 groups.
This study concerns Holland, but there is no reason to believe that the figures are different in any EU-country or in any other country in the world, for that matter. It is clear that the last seven years of extra life expectancy for non-smokers demand a lot of very expensive health care costs. Or, to put it in another manner, smokers are members of the work force for a longer time. Smokers are working 58% of their life years while non-smokers, who live 7 years longer, work only 46% of the years they live. At the same time, the study shows, the diseases old people get in their 80’s and 90’s are extremely expensive.
And this study does not even mention the additional cost of pensions, which, because of greater longevity causes everybody to share – to the point that the pension systems, in most countries, are already strained to the limit.
Now suppose that the smoking bans really could push all smokers to become “healthy” non-smokers. What an extremely bad influence it would have on the health care costs! They would rise by an astronomical 25% for health care alone, without considering, once again, pensions. Society would literally fall apart, simply because it cannot produce the resources to sustain us all. That in turn would create such an economic hardship that the standard of living would fall under that safety level that has improved public health and thus extended life in the first place.
But that fundamental point is not even considered by the hysterical “public health” advocates in spite of the glaring signs and “squeaks” of economies all over the world. Almost no country on Earth could effectively sustain an average life span of 90, for example, in consideration of the population increase, the higher general demand for resources, the expectations from the health care systems and the geometrically increasing costs of rampant regulations. Simply put, it is unsustainable.
Yet bureaucrats, the “public health” establishment and opportunist politicians are so obtuse, blind and irresponsible to be unable to see the mathematical reality of imbalance between resources and life prolongation, blinded by a quasi-religious, fanatical ideology. “Public health” in particular and the “health and safety” obsession are already destroying our standard of living and will eventually destroy the very goal they want to achieve plunging us, to boot, in a brutal and faceless dictatorship.
That is the final goal of nihilism, after all.
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