More people are turning towards Utah's Medicaid program at a time when there's fewer dollars to go around. Since the recession began, the program has seen a 20 percent enrollment increase. The program went from 160,000 participants to 200,000 participants. "What Medicaid does in times like this is it catches those people who can't get health care coverage on their own anymore," said Lincoln Nehring, Utah's Medicaid Policy Director.
A new report by the Utah Health Policy Project made several recommendations as to how the state can not only save money but raise revenue for Medicaid. The report suggests the state work harder at preventing Medicaid fraud, revise the program's preferred drug list, and increase tobacco taxes from 70 cents per cigarette pack to two dollars per pack.
"If you look long term for the state of Medicaid, a tobacco tax increase will probably serve the program and the health of Utahns well." says Nehring.
Last year, a similar tax increase failed, but Medicaid advocates believe the state's current budget deficit will force lawmakers to act.
Top senate leadership responded to the tobacco tax idea. Senator Wayne Neiderhouser says he doesn't think it will solve Medicaid's problem in the long term. He would only support a tobacco tax increase if the money went towards Utah's tobacco trust fund.
Senator Michael Waddoups says the plan would likely have enough votes to pass the senate, but only if the governor approves.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Malawi Deports Universal
Malawi, the world’s largest burley tobacco producer, said it will deport officials of Alliance One Inc. and the local unit of Universal Corp. for paying below government-mandated prices for the leaf.
“This is the action I have taken,” President Bingu wa Mutharika said in a speech broadcast live on the state-owned Malawi Broadcasting Corp. radio station today. “They have been defying my orders to pay better prices and I have decided to chase them.”
The government yesterday revoked temporary work permits for officials of Alliance One, Universal-unit Limbe Leaf Tobacco, and Premium Tama Tobacco Co., and issued them with 24-hour deportation orders.
Karen Whelan, spokeswoman for Richmond, Virginia-based Universal, didn’t immediately return a message left on her office phone. Henry Babb, a spokesman for Morrisville, North Carolina-based Alliance One, didn’t return a message left at his office. A receptionist at Premium Tama’s Lilongwe office said Managing Director Tom Malata isn’t available to comment.
Malawi started setting minimum prices for the various grades of tobacco two years ago after it accused merchants of putting farmers out of business. While dealers denied that they underpaid farmers, Wa Mutharika on April 6 threatened to deport buyers if prices didn’t improve.
‘Can’t Allow It’
“They have been telling our farmers to grow better quality leaf and yet what they are buying at the auction floors is the low quality tobacco,” he said today. “They have been doing this deliberately to accuse the farmers of producing low quality leaf and paying them less. I can’t allow that.”
This season Malawi set a price of $2.15 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) for burley tobacco and $3.09 a kilogram for flue-cured tobacco. Tobacco Control Commission Chief Executive Officer Bruce Munthali on Sept. 4 reported to the government that buyers were ignoring these prices, the president said today.
The southern African nation relies on sales of the leaf for 60 percent of its export earnings. Burley tobacco is a lower- grade variety of the leaf used to fill cigarettes flavored with higher-grade flue-cured tobacco.
Malawi is forecast to produce 245 million kilograms (539 million pounds) of burley this year, according to the Web site of Universal. That’s more than double its closest rivals, Brazil and the U.S., and more than a quarter of global output. Flue- cured production of 25 million kilograms is about 0.6 percent of the projected world crop.
Universal, the world’s largest tobacco merchant, owns 58 percent of Limbe Leaf through its Continental unit, with the remainder owned by Press Corp. Ltd. of Malawi, according to Limbe’s Web site.
Calls to the local office of Alliance One in Lilongwe were not answered. A person who answered the phone at Limbe Leaf in the city said Chairman Mathews Chikaonda is the only official authorized to speak to the press and he is unavailable because he’s in China.
“This is the action I have taken,” President Bingu wa Mutharika said in a speech broadcast live on the state-owned Malawi Broadcasting Corp. radio station today. “They have been defying my orders to pay better prices and I have decided to chase them.”
The government yesterday revoked temporary work permits for officials of Alliance One, Universal-unit Limbe Leaf Tobacco, and Premium Tama Tobacco Co., and issued them with 24-hour deportation orders.
Karen Whelan, spokeswoman for Richmond, Virginia-based Universal, didn’t immediately return a message left on her office phone. Henry Babb, a spokesman for Morrisville, North Carolina-based Alliance One, didn’t return a message left at his office. A receptionist at Premium Tama’s Lilongwe office said Managing Director Tom Malata isn’t available to comment.
Malawi started setting minimum prices for the various grades of tobacco two years ago after it accused merchants of putting farmers out of business. While dealers denied that they underpaid farmers, Wa Mutharika on April 6 threatened to deport buyers if prices didn’t improve.
‘Can’t Allow It’
“They have been telling our farmers to grow better quality leaf and yet what they are buying at the auction floors is the low quality tobacco,” he said today. “They have been doing this deliberately to accuse the farmers of producing low quality leaf and paying them less. I can’t allow that.”
This season Malawi set a price of $2.15 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) for burley tobacco and $3.09 a kilogram for flue-cured tobacco. Tobacco Control Commission Chief Executive Officer Bruce Munthali on Sept. 4 reported to the government that buyers were ignoring these prices, the president said today.
The southern African nation relies on sales of the leaf for 60 percent of its export earnings. Burley tobacco is a lower- grade variety of the leaf used to fill cigarettes flavored with higher-grade flue-cured tobacco.
Malawi is forecast to produce 245 million kilograms (539 million pounds) of burley this year, according to the Web site of Universal. That’s more than double its closest rivals, Brazil and the U.S., and more than a quarter of global output. Flue- cured production of 25 million kilograms is about 0.6 percent of the projected world crop.
Universal, the world’s largest tobacco merchant, owns 58 percent of Limbe Leaf through its Continental unit, with the remainder owned by Press Corp. Ltd. of Malawi, according to Limbe’s Web site.
Calls to the local office of Alliance One in Lilongwe were not answered. A person who answered the phone at Limbe Leaf in the city said Chairman Mathews Chikaonda is the only official authorized to speak to the press and he is unavailable because he’s in China.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Hot air from Big Tobacco
Any company selling products that addict and eventually kill 400,000 customers annually might well be reluctant to point out the health dangers.
So the federal courts should be mighty skeptical when Big Tobacco screams about its First Amendment rights to keep peddling cigarettes without the oversize health warning labels ordered by Congress this year.
With a free-speech lawsuit filed last week, the nation's largest tobacco companies challenged marketing restrictions and a mandate from the Food and Drug Administration to cover the top half of cigarette packages with graphic warnings by next year.
The glaring warnings on cigarette packs are among the directives provided under the FDA's new oversight of tobacco products approved in landmark public-health legislation signed by President Obama in June.
Along with the warning labels and limits on tobacco advertising, the FDA won the right to ban toxic substances in cigarettes and restrict levels of addictive nicotine.
But the trade-off was a major victory for tobacco companies such as giant Philip Morris U.S.A. that assured nicotine would never be banned. And now the industry can market its products as having the FDA's stamp of approval, even though smoking-related illnesses will continue to kill thousands.
Even with those gains in hand, there was little doubt that cigarette makers would try to wriggle out from under the FDA advertising and labeling mandates. In fact, it took just a few months.
For decades, tobacco firms hid the devastating health risks of smoking, made bogus safety claims, and pitched smoking to teens.
Despite that history as a rogue industry, the tobacco companies contend in their lawsuit that tobacco products are legal and, therefore, they have a right to market widely and refuse labels that "stigmatize their own products."
The case likely will reach the Supreme Court, which decisively struck down restrictions on billboard tobacco ads on free speech grounds in 2001. Were the industry's broad legal challenge to succeed, FDA regulation of tobacco would be virtually meaningless.
Maybe Big Tobacco will be able to hide behind the Bill of Rights, but Americans should have a greater right to public-health efforts designed to safeguard them from the deadly ills of smoking.
So the federal courts should be mighty skeptical when Big Tobacco screams about its First Amendment rights to keep peddling cigarettes without the oversize health warning labels ordered by Congress this year.
With a free-speech lawsuit filed last week, the nation's largest tobacco companies challenged marketing restrictions and a mandate from the Food and Drug Administration to cover the top half of cigarette packages with graphic warnings by next year.
The glaring warnings on cigarette packs are among the directives provided under the FDA's new oversight of tobacco products approved in landmark public-health legislation signed by President Obama in June.
Along with the warning labels and limits on tobacco advertising, the FDA won the right to ban toxic substances in cigarettes and restrict levels of addictive nicotine.
But the trade-off was a major victory for tobacco companies such as giant Philip Morris U.S.A. that assured nicotine would never be banned. And now the industry can market its products as having the FDA's stamp of approval, even though smoking-related illnesses will continue to kill thousands.
Even with those gains in hand, there was little doubt that cigarette makers would try to wriggle out from under the FDA advertising and labeling mandates. In fact, it took just a few months.
For decades, tobacco firms hid the devastating health risks of smoking, made bogus safety claims, and pitched smoking to teens.
Despite that history as a rogue industry, the tobacco companies contend in their lawsuit that tobacco products are legal and, therefore, they have a right to market widely and refuse labels that "stigmatize their own products."
The case likely will reach the Supreme Court, which decisively struck down restrictions on billboard tobacco ads on free speech grounds in 2001. Were the industry's broad legal challenge to succeed, FDA regulation of tobacco would be virtually meaningless.
Maybe Big Tobacco will be able to hide behind the Bill of Rights, but Americans should have a greater right to public-health efforts designed to safeguard them from the deadly ills of smoking.
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