No On 50

As I'm sure most of you know, measure 50 didn't pass. This makes me happy for many reasons even though I am not a smoker. But I have to say, I am a bit surprised because Oregon voters have historically been easy to guilt into adding taxes.

Taxing smokers to pay for any sort of health care is essentially punishing people for what is perceived as a social vice these days. They may as well be saying that smokers are the cause of everyone's bad health, and thus are responsible for paying for the eventual medical bills. (Why not charge it to porn addicts, gamblers, or anyone who ever spent any time in jail? There are lots of vices to choose from.)

As one friend put it, smoking is the bogeyman. It is an easy target and as history has proved smokers will put up with added taxes. But smokers and tobacco aren't the problem. The problem is that there are a bunch of kids with no health insurance. (Here is what the Healthy Kids Plan was gonna do...)

Here is a very simplistic reverse causality. Why don't they have insurance? Parent's can't afford it? Why can't they afford it? It costs too much. Why does it cost too much? Frivolous lawsuits (?), people with inability to pay taking necessary or unnecessary trips to the ER, inflation... (Interesting info here.)

But that is all a rant. What is really bothersome is how in all of this, no one really knows how that money was going to change anything. Even the link I posted above wasn't specific. There were no dollar amounts mentioned---nothing. In fact, I am utterly SHOCKED at how vague that site is. It just looks like a nice (completely unthought-out) idea to me, and nothing more.