Gov't to Cover Smoking Cessation Programs (only if you are already sick)

[Kadie]

Gov't to Cover Smoking Cessation Programs
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, March 22, 2005



(03-22) 15:25 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --


You're never to old to quit smoking, government officials said Tuesday, announcing that Medicare will immediately start covering the cost of counseling for certain beneficiaries who want to quit tobacco.


Medicare's new smoking cessation program "has great potential to save and improve lives for millions of seniors," said Mark McClellan, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.


Not every Medicare beneficiary qualifies for the new benefit — only those who have an illness caused by tobacco use or complicated by tobacco use.


Medicare officials said Tuesday they did not have an estimate of how much the new program would cost or how many people would be eligible for it. It covers only counseling sessions, not the cost of nicotine patches and gum or products pitched to help smokers quit. About 300,000 senior citizens die annually from smoking-related illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/03/22/national/w152558S99.DTL

Want help to quit smoking? Just get sick and then we may be able to help you! AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

[gizmo1979]

1. I'm still waiting for my share of smoking settlement.

[candy]

2. Me too !

[Career Prole]

3. I never understood why tobacco settlement funds weren't used

for smoking cessation programs. Some states even put the money into funds which invested in tobacco companies, if I remember correctly.
:shrug:

[Sgent]

4. Medicare

cannot cover preventative measures unless their is an act of congress. They can cover treatment by regulation.

[Kadie]

5. GAO: Tobacco Money Going Into Budget Holes

GAO: Tobacco Money Going Into Budget Holes

Wednesday March 23, 2005 12:16 AM


WASHINGTON (AP) - States continued to use money from the 1998 settlement with cigarette companies to plug holes in their budgets last year but planned to spend a greater percentage of that money on health-related programs in 2005, according to congressional auditors.

A report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office showed 46 states received about $9.7 billion through the Master Settlement Agreement in 2004, and used the largest portion - 44 percent - to address budget shortfalls.

About 20 percent was spent on health-related programs, according to the GAO, the investigative and auditing arm of Congress.

At the time of the $206 billion settlement, state officials said the goal was to recover the cost of treating sick smokers, but the agreement does not restrict how the money must be spent.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4885395,00.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. What do these people know.... that most

Americans don't....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14653310
1: Toxicol Ind Health. 2002 Jun;18(5):215-24. Related Articles, Links

Pycnogenol in cigarette filters scavenges free radicals and reduces mutagenicity and toxicity of tobacco smoke in vivo.

Zhang D, Tao Y, Gao J, Zhang C, Wan S, Chen Y, Huang X, Sun X, Duan S, Schonlau F, Rohdewald P, Zhao B.
Institute of Biophysics, Academia Sinica, 15 Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, PR China.

>>Addition of the bioflavonoid pine bark extract Pycnogenol to cigarette filters depleted free radicals in a dose dependent manner. This was paralleled by a reduction of toxicity and mutagenicity in rodent test models. In this model system, the acute toxicity of cigarette smoke was markedly reduced by up to 70% in rodents with 0.4 mg Pycnogenol in filters. Chronic exposure to cigarette smoke for 75 days revealed that Pycnogenol filters significantly reduced mutagenicity by up to 48% and decreased pathological changes in lung tissue.

PMID: 14653310 <<