Cutting tobacco prevention funding a mistake
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On Jan. 31, the Legislative leadership on the Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services passed a motion to remove $8.2 million from tobacco prevention funding, which would basically result in the elimination of the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program.
Why cutting tobacco prevention funding does not make fiscal sense:
Full funding for the MTUPP program was directed by a voter initiative, I-146. Montana currently uses the majority of its Master Settlement Agreement income for its intended purposes: improved health and tobacco disease prevention. The Master Settlement Agreement is an agreement entered into in 1998 between the four largest U.S. tobacco companies and the attorney generals of 46 states. The states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health care costs.
Therefore, the funding for Montana’s Tobacco Use Prevention Program does not originate from taxpayer revenues; rather, it is litigation money from the four major tobacco companies in the U.S. funding a very important preventative health program.
Important components of these community-based tobacco prevention programs include: youth prevention, health education, cessation resources in the form of the Montana Quit Line, and community work to support and enforce the Clean Indoor Air Act. Compliance with the CIAA is more than 99 percent, largely due to the education efforts of tobacco prevention specialists prior to the law being passed in October of 2009. The Montana Tobacco Quit Line has served more than 52,000 Montanans since 2004 and more than 17,500 have quit for good. In January of 2011, there were 1,868 callers - the largest number of calls per month since the program was initiated.
Although tobacco addiction rates are down, tobacco companies continue to market new nicotine products that are attractive to children, like candy flavors and packaging that resembles sweets. MTUPP is a highly successful, cost-effective public health program that saves lives and preserves healthcare dollars:• Youth smoking rates in Montana dropped more than 45% from 2000 to 2010, from 27 percent to 15 percent.• Adult smoking rates decreased 23 percent from 1998 to 2009, from 22 percent to 17 percent and remain below the national average.
Currently over 80 percent of Montanans support reserving Master Settlement Agreement revenue for tobacco use prevention:
• In November 2000, 73 percent of Montana voters decided that 40 percent of MSA income would be placed in a Health Programs Trust fund to be used solely for health care benefits, services and education programs, and for tobacco disease prevention.
• In November 2002, 65 percent of voters passed I-146; placing 32 percent of MSA funds into a special revenue account to fund a tobacco use prevention program and the Tobacco Prevention Advisory Board.
All voter initiatives become part of our state law; so these five members of the Joint Appropriations Subcommittee (Senators Dave Lewis and Jason Priest, Representatives Don Roberts, John Esp, and Tom Burnett) overturned Montana’s state law, and the will of more than 80 percent of Montanans. Montana’s treasury holds this MSA income. According to state law, the legislature must appropriate the money according to its stated purpose in order for it to be spent.
Montana loses more than a half billion dollars every year paying for care for people with tobacco-caused illnesses and in lost business income resulting from employees being sick. Overall, smoking costs Montanans $277 million in excess medical costs and $305 million in lost productivity every year. The cost per year to Medicaid alone is $67 million.
Preventative healthcare is a proven method of saving healthcare dollars for all of us. It is an issue the voters have decided, an effective prevention program against the number one cause of preventable death, not only in Montana but across the United States. Fiscally, it makes much more sense to prevent disease than to treat the end results of it. Eighty percent of Montanans agree.
