25 September 2018 — 0817 mdt
Is the Lung Cancer Lobby lying about Initiative 185?
Initiative 185 raises taxes on tobacco products sold in Montana, and repeals the sunset provision in the law that expanded Medicaid in Montana.
Healthy Montana, the organization behind I-185 says big tobacco, which is spending approximately $9 million to defeat I-185, is blowing a cloud of dirty lies at the voters:
I-185 raises the tobacco tax by $2 per pack and protects 100,000 Montanans from losing their Medicaid coverage. If you don’t smoke, you don’t pay. [Emphasis added.]
The lung cancer lobbyists claim that expanded Medicaid will cost Montana $60 million a year, but that I-185 only allocates $26 million to expanded Medicaid, thereby creating a $34 million shortfall that will require raising taxes on all Montanans.
Who’s right?
Healthy Montana is being far more truthful than the lung cancer lobbyists, but it’s claim that “…you don’t smoke, you don’t pay” doesn’t hold up in all cases.
According to Mike Dennison’s report on I-185, two non-I-185 sources of money offset the alleged $34 million unfunded mandate:
But the Bullock administration, which supports extending Medicaid expansion, says the program also saves the state about $31 million a year, by providing a better federal match for people who would be covered by Medicaid anyways.
It also says those covered by Medicaid expansion will pay about $4.5 million a year in small premiums for their coverage. Together, these two amounts essentially erase the “unfunded mandate,” supporters on I-185 say.
The “premium” is a tax, a tax on the poor, and it will be paid by all — smokers and chewers and nonsmokers and nonchewers — condemned to expanded Medicaid. Therefore, although Healthy Montana’s “If you don’t smoke, you don’t pay” claim is true for most Montanans, it it not true for all Montanans.
If expanded Medicaid is extended, Montana will pay approximately ten percent of the cost and the federal government will cover the rest — approximately $500 million per year. If I-185 is defeated, Montana loses half a billion dollars a year.
According to Gov. Bullock, speaking in a 30-second broadcast message supporting I-185, if the initiative passes, expanded Medicaid is “paid for.” Like Healthy Montana’s publicists, he argues that the ballot measure is a good thing — and it is, although it could be better — and elides inconvenient details, basically urging the voters to trust him, not the smoke stained tobacco flacks spewing lies because they care more about protecting profits than about saving lives.
This election will be close, and I-185 could lose. Nine million dollars spreads a lot of lies and half-truths. The authors of I-185, trying to be too clever, handed the lung cancer lobby a sword that’s now being used to slash support for the proposition that only smokers and chewers will pay higher taxes if I-185 passes.
I’m voting for I-185. It’s far from perfect, but its downsides pale compared to its upsides. It will provide rudimentary health insurance for one hundred thousand of our friends and neighbors, fund programs to reduce and mitigate the evil of tobacco, and assure our state of an annual infusion of half a billion dollars.