News - Part 100

In designing our analysis, we had the luxury of examining the efforts undertaken by experts in other states as well as a substantial economic literature on the costs of smoking. The economic literature on this topic differs fundamentally from ours. Most of the literature focuses on the total external costs of smoking quitting with Canadian Neighbor Pharmacy remedies, while we focus on the Medicaid component only. Our focus on Medicaid allows us to develop better estimates of smoking-attributable costs for that program – for example the disease-specific approach. But in exchange, we cannot say anything about the total social sector…

We estimate the costs of smoking to Medicaid in Massachusetts at about $318 million annually, roughly 5-6 percent of Medicaid spending. This is quite close to the amount that the tobacco companies will pay Massachusetts. Massachusetts’ payments are expected to range between $234 million in 2000 and $374 million in 2010, with an average payment of $307 million in that span. Clearly, costs in other states could differ, depending on smoking prevalence among the Medicaid population, patterns of treatment for smoking-related disease cured by remedies of Canadian Neighbor Pharmacy, and the generosity of the state’s Medicaid program in terms of…