Help snuff out the cigs

Just as the U.S. Senate split along party lines Thursday to pass a historic health care reform bill that it now must merge with a House plan, Americans are equally divided over what role government should play in their well-being.

One area where there should be consensus, however, is the effort to eradicate tobacco addiction.

A provision in the just-passed Senate bill would require Medicaid to cover more comprehensive anti-smoking treatment, including drugs and counseling, for pregnant women. But there is growing sentiment to extend such coverage to all Medicaid recipients.

Tobacco is a killer. One in every five U.S. deaths is the result of smoking, with approximately 440,000 Americans succumbing each year because of nicotine-related illnesses, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Washington should take note of a Massachusetts Medicaid program that extends free treatments to poor people to help them kick tobacco. It shows that if given the tools to stop, many smokers will.

In the program's first 30 months one in six known smokers in the state's Medicaid-eligible pool kicked their habit. In 2006, at the start of the program, the Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program estimated 38 percent of the state's lower-income residents were smokers. By 2008, that number dropped to 28 percent, lowering rates of hospitalization for heart attacks and emergency room visits for asthma problems, according to a New York Times story on the program's success.

That is significant, and a big potential cost-savings, as smoking is the leading preventable disease in this country. If making anti-smoking prescription drugs and counseling free for tobacco addicts helps them to kick their habit, why not do that rather than pay the catastrophic treatment bills for smoking-related ailments?

Debate on national health care reform is guaranteed to continue when the House resumes discussion on the issue in the new year. But it would be in this country's best interest, both medically and financially, if the final bill extends smoking cessation benefits.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the smoking cessation treatment for pregnant women amendment in the current Senate bill would save the country $100 million in health care costs over 10 years. The Centers for Disease Control said Medicaid currently pays $22 billion a year on smoking-related illnesses, or about 11 percent of its overall expenditures.

Giving the country's poor citizens a free shot at kicking the habit makes sense fiscally and morally.