The lamestream media told you:

Smoking is so bad it should be outlawed everywhere, and a private establishment should not be allowed to allow smoking even within its own private walls.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The American Academy of Physicians and Surgeons has released a report that indicates nonsmoking persons of normal weight have the highest lifetime medical costs.

Politicians and others usually list the funding of prevention and chronic disease management programs as a key method of achieving cost containment. Smoking and obesity are most frequently mentioned as risk factors to target. In the long run, however, removing these risk factors would probably increase medical costs -- even assuming that preventive interventions cost nothing.

Using a simulation model, researchers found that never-smokers of normal weight actually incurred higher lifetime medical costs than obese nonsmokers. Smokers of normal weight had the lowest costs. Life years gained through prevention are not lived in full health. Reduction of risky behavior resulted in substituting expensive, chronic diseases of aging for cheap, lethal ones.

In other news, Japan passed a law to outlaw flabbiness, but the belief that it will reduce medical costs may lead to overmedication and increased medical costs. Read (and comment on) the story here.

Tags: smoking, The American Academy of Physicians and Surgeons