Smoking

S. health-care costs. .
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             • Federal and state funds pay more than 43 percent of all smoking-attributable medical-care expenditures. .
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             • In 1993, hospital expenditures accounted for 54 percent ($27 billion) of all smoking-related medical costs. Other costs were for physician expenses (31 percent), nursing home expenses (10 percent), prescription drug charges (4 percent), and home health costs (2 percent). .
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             • A survey of 48 private insurance companies selling insurance in California found that only 27.2 percent have a rate structure based upon smoking status, charging lower premiums for non-smokers. Only two percent sell policies that cover smoking cessation treatment, despite a 1989 amendment to California's insurance code requiring group health insurance plans to offer (although not provide) the treatment. .
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             • The number of worldwide deaths caused by cigarettes may triple in the next 25 years to reach 10 million, according to a new study by Britain's Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society. That means one person will die from tobacco-related illness every three seconds, according to data from 45 countries. .
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             • The American Health Foundation cited increased cigarette smoking as a factor in the deteriorating health of the nation's children. In its 1994 Child Health Report Card, the foundation gave a grade of C-, the same as last year. The report found that use of cigarettes among high school seniors increased in 1993 after several years of decline. .
            
             • Tobacco use accounts for much of the 18 percent increase in the incidence of cancer and the 7 percent rise in cancer's mortality since 1971, a National Cancer Institute advisory committee panel says. Cancer is currently the second-largest killer in the nation (behind heart disease), but could become the top killer in five years, the group said.