Much of the health care costs of the elderly are from chronic disease which itself is from smoking and obesity among other causes.
Other countries such as the UK, France, and Canada have tobacco taxes at least $5 to $7 per pack. The high cost of tobacco has more than half the effect to help people to quit and helps to ensure the young never start smoking. The tobacco taxes can also be used to pay for the higher health care costs that smokers have thus helping to reduce the subsidy in health care that non-smokers pays for smokers.
When the ACA was put into place, they should have raised the Federal tobacco tax to be $5 to $7 per pack (today it is about $1).
full disclosure: I smoke, and am thus not impartial when it comes to higher cigarette taxes.
Whether overall there is health savings for smokers, while the smokers are being covered by insurance they cost substantially more money than non-smokers.
Even in the debates it was obvious both candidates were talking about keeping the act. I thought it was bizarre they didn't acknowledge that to each other.
"Fix it"
"Repeal it and replace it with more competitive state exchanges" so like fix it?
Rather, most of health care costs are from chronic disease from mostly tobacco use and obesity. Obesity is largely caused by sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). Taxing tobacco and SSBs will dramatically reduce the chronic disease costs from smoking and obesity.
I know, I ask and hope too much.