Missouri may fund pilot project on smoking cessation
JEFFERSON CITY — Sen. Joan Bray won a tentative victory today when the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to put $2 million in the budget for a smoking cessation program.
Bray, D-University City, sought the funds to help low-income pregnant women on Medicaid kick the habit.
The funds — about $700,000 from the state and $1.3 million from the federal government — would help about 3,500 women, estimated Ian McCaslin, director of the Medicaid program.
He said the state would get its investment back by spending less on intensive care for newborns. In fact, the state would recover its money by avoiding a month and a half of such care for one set of twins, McCaslin said.
“This is not an area of uncertainty in the medical literature,” McCaslin said. “It’s well-founded. The return on investment is quite dramatic for smoking cessation.”
Missouri is one of only six states where the Medicaid program doesn’t cover any smoking cessation counseling and medication.
Appropriations Chairman Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, agreed to put the money in the budget and see what colleagues in the House say about it. It was a key step because in the past, the House has approved the program but the Senate has killed it.
$2 million for 3,500 people?
I’m not quite so sure we’d be getting much bang for the buck, there.
OH NO! What about the poor children?
If the smokers quit, who will pay for Schip?
I’m a male and can’t get pregnant, at least until stem cell research makes it possible for me to do so, so I guess that means I can’t get into this program. Another way for neo-nazi women to kill off white males.
This program definitely will create a large bang for its buck! The average cost of medical care for a low birth-weight baby for its first year of life is about $49,000. Given that 11.9 percent of babies born to smokers in the United States are of low birth-weight, even if only 25% of the 3500 women targeted in this program quit smoking, the state would save, on average, more than $5 million. This is a return on investment of $3 million for the first year of the baby’s lives, not to mention other costs saved during the rest of of the baby’s lives because low birth-weight was prevented.
I rather agree with dudley_doorag, this is too silly to set aside $2m for stopping smoking program for the poorer, pregnant women. I think the money would be better spent on better access to birth control & reproductive health.