Las Vegas Sun

November 29, 2009

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Letter: Excise tax beats a surcharge

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

This is in response to your Feb. 18 editorial, in which you said it was "fair" for companies to add a surcharge to the health care premiums paid by employees who are smokers.

Employers have been sticking their nose in their workers' off time since the feudal days. The current trend to make smokers pay more for company-paid health insurance is just the latest example.

Doesn't it make more sense to recover the excess health care costs of smoking with an additional excise tax on the product itself? Divide the health care cost by consumption and assess it at the point of sale. This penalty for harmful activities could include alcohol, pollution and every sort of financial speculation.

We could take it one more step and get employers out of the health insurance loop altogether. That way they would have no vested interest in the matter. That $3,000 per employee they now spend on insurance could go straight to the Medicare trust fund, which could be expanded to cover all Americans.

Dale Quale, Las Vegas

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