Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 13, 1993 TAG: 9403180039
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But other products also are made to hurt. Handgun revolvers, 9-millimeter automatics, Saturday-night specials are widely bought and intended not for recreational target practice, but to be aimed and shot at people.
Such weapons are used to kill on average 65 people every day, including about 15 children - and handguns, like cigarettes, are jacking up health-care costs by millions of dollars daily.
The Clinton administration rightly couches an increased tax on cigarettes as a health-care tax - one that would be good for the nation's health while also helping to pay for the expenses that the unfortunate activity imposes on society.
The idea is not only to help finance more accessible health care for all, but also to discourage tobacco use - to convince many smokers to quit or reduce their consumption; to convince others, particularly young people, never to take up the habit; to save lives.
And now comes Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., arguing that a similar logic should apply to ammunition. He says a major federal tax increase on handgun ammunition could also serve as a health-care tax - helping to pay for expenses that gun violence imposes on society, while helpfully discouraging the use of guns.
It's an interesting idea. Price the bullets high enough, says Moynihan, and some people will give up gun slinging. Others, particularly young people, may be dissuaded from taking up the habit. A high tax on ammunition wouldn't save nearly as many lives as a high tax on cigarettes, but it wouldn't hurt, either. And it could reduce health-care costs - estimated by some at $14 billion a year - now being spent on gunshot victims.
A recent study by the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions found that the average hospital charge for treating a child wounded by gunfire is $14,434. That is slightly more than the average cost of a full year's tuition plus room and board in a private college.
Moreover, about half of these medical costs were paid by taxpayers, through Medicaid, or written off as charity care by hospitals, which, of course, in turn pass on the costs as higher charges for the general public. Meanwhile, every medical dollar spent on acute care or long-term rehabilitation of gunshot victims is a dollar unavailable for preventive care or medical research.
Visit any big-city emergency room in America on a Saturday night, and you can't avoid seeing gun violence as a health issue.
When a proposed tax increase on ammunition was first floated, along with the possibility of a 25 percent sales tax on handguns and increased license fees for gun dealers, Hillary Clinton, first lady and health-care-reform czar, said: "I'm all for it." Her husband, however, has been tiptoeing around the issue, presumably wary of taking on the pro-gun lobby in addition to the powerful tobacco industry in his battle for health-care reform.
But it wouldn't hurt to bite the bullet and take on ammunition sellers. When violent Americans find it easier to obtain killing, maiming firepower than prescription drugs - and care for the victims is costing in the billions - can anyone reasonably believe guns aren't part of the national health-care crisis?
When gun deaths, including suicides, now total more than 37,000 a year, can anyone reasonably suggest that this epidemic be excluded from the health-care debate?
by CNB