BY MICHAEL ROIZEN, M.D., AND MEHMET OZ, M.D.
Just imagine knowing that if you spend $10 to get healthier, you'll save $160. Guaranteed. And that the more you spend, the bigger your savings. Eventually, you could invest $50, save $737 and be way healthier. You'd be forking over every spare dollar, right?
That's exactly what your state politicians could be doing -- and in most states, exactly what they're NOT doing. How crazy is that? By the way, put "million" after the dollar amounts above. Each year, each state could save $737 million, on average! That's future jobs money. Infrastructure, cut-the-debt, heal-the-economy money. Big bucks.
Where's it coming from? States got a ginormous windfall in 1998, when big tobacco agreed to pay $206 billion to them over 25 years. But the average state is wasting it. We YOU Docs have kvetched about this before -- Dr. Mike co-wrote a major report on it -- but we're even madder. More and more of the money is being diverted from stop-smoking programs, proven to slash health care expenses, lost productivity and Medicaid payments. Not to mention the toll smoking takes on smokers' hearts, lungs, brains and the people who love them.
"Short-sighted" is polite talk for this. A new analysis has calculated what's being lost: tons. If your politicians will just spend the average recommended amount of $74 million on anti-tobacco efforts, your state will pocket at least 11 times that: from $853 million to more than $1 billion.
We want you to blow your stack, too. Find email or Tweet links for your legislators at www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and light a fire! We are.
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The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz, host of "The Dr. Oz Show" and Mike Roizen of Cleveland Clinic, are authors of "YOU: Losing Weight." For more information go to www.RealAge.com.
(c) 2011 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
