Guest Opinion: I-185: If you don’t use tobacco, you don’t pay
Billings Gazette and Montana Standard
By DAVID EWER and MONICA LINDEEN
All Montanans are picking up the tab for the increased health care costs associated with Big Tobacco’s products. The Healthy Montana Initiative, I-185, will finally ask multinational tobacco corporations and smokers to pay their fair share to fight cancer and tobacco-related diseases. Right now, treating tobacco-related diseases among Medicaid recipients costs more than $81 million per year. Today, Montana taxpayers are helping to pay those costs whether they smoke or not. With this initiative, if you don’t smoke, you won’t pay.
Unfortunately, to protect their billions in profits, Big Tobacco claims that I-185 will somehow drive up taxes for everyone. Not true. I-185 is straightforward: if you don’t use tobacco, you won’t pay.
In addition, an independent review of the initiative from the Office of Budget and Program Planning shows that revenue from raising the state tax on tobacco products will ensure health care isn’t taken away from thousands of Montana families and veterans. The OBPP is the appropriate source of the budget impact for I-185 and any initiative or new law. OBPP has found that increasing the state tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products will raise about $72 million in fiscal year 2020 and up to $74 million in fiscal year 2023. The fiscal note clearly states Medicaid expansion will continue to pay for itself through state savings and the funds designated in the initiative.
Let us be crystal clear: I-185 protects current Medicaid recipients all over this state from having their coverage taken away. Despite Big Tobacco’s claims to the contrary, it does not create a new program.
Anyone who reads the independent OBPP analysis will see very clearly that when you account for the ongoing savings associated with Medicaid expansion and the new tobacco tax revenue, I-185 is cost effective. I-185 would prevent nearly 100,000 Montanans from losing Medicaid coverage, which includes thousands of Montana veterans and their families who have sacrificed for us and are now eligible for Medicaid. Some of the new funds would also go directly to veterans’ services and to address unmet needs, like suicide prevention for veterans.
Just as importantly, I-185 will reduce the costs created by Big Tobacco’s deadly products. You don’t have to take it from us. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network research shows that increasing the state cigarette tax by $2 per pack will:
Decrease youth smoking rates by 20.6 percent.
Prevent 8,000 Montana kids from becoming adult smokers.
Help 9,300 adults quit smoking.
What does that mean for average Montana families, businesses, and taxpayers? It means almost $365 million in long-term health care cost savings.
Big Tobacco is already dumping millions into Montana to distort the truth about I-185. We urge voters to do their homework and to vote yes on I-185. You’ll be in the good company of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, AARP Montana, nurses, doctors, rural hospitals, veterans, and thousands of your neighbors who are tired of paying the price for Big Tobacco’s costly and deadly products.
Editor’s note: David Ewer served seven years as executive director of the Montana Board of Investments and as Montana’s budget director during the Great Recession, worked to ensure the state stayed financially sound. Monica Lindeen was elected to two terms as Montana auditor and commissioner of insurance and served as president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. The tax I-185 proposes also would apply to vaping substances.