In the News Voter Warning: Regressive Tobacco Taxes Do More Harm Than Good
Most problematic is the backward nature of the proposal funding Medicaid while taxing e-cigarettes, which can alleviate Medicaid spending. The R Street Institute found that Medicaid savings “will be approximately $2.8 billion per 1 percent of enrollees” over the next 25 years if one percent of Medicaid recipients switched from smoking to e-cigarettes. A larger analysis by State Budget Solutions determined that if all Medicaid recipients would have switched to e-cigarettes from traditional cigarettes, Medicaid savings could have amounted to $48 billion by 2012.
