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You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Repeal is pro-skin cancer

Repeal is pro-skin cancer

by David Anderson|  March 3, 20171:04 pm| 23 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

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The leaked repeal bill from mid-February eliminated the artificial tanning excise tax.  UV tanning bed services were taxed at 10% to partially fund the ACA.  This is not a huge source of revenue but it is a source of revenue that also performs the function of public health improvement over the long term.  This tax repeal will result in more people with cancer.

Stat News highlights a study that shows the incremental number of skin cancers that are caused by tanning beds to be significant:

Tanning beds can ring up a steep bill — a whopping $343 million each year in medical costs in the US alone….

The researchers looked at all skin cancer cases in 2015, and then applied data on indoor tanning prevalence and relative risk of skin cancer after using a tanning bed to those numbers. They estimated that there were 263,600 cases of skin cancer in 2015 that could be attributed to the use of tanning beds.

This is an estimate.  But it is significant.  Approximately 1% of the tanning bed user base gets cancer from tanning bed use according to the estimate.

The 10% tax raises the relative price of tanning compared to other alternatives (beach, non-UV tanning, not tanning at all etc) so it reduces tanning bed utilization compared to the counterfactual of no tax.  Under a no tax scenario, more people will tan and current tanners will incrementally increase utilization.  Both of those results will lead to incrementally more cancers.

It’s complicated.  Just remember that as taxes are cut in the name of freedom to get more cancer.

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Reader Interactions

23Comments

  1. 1.

    WereBear

    March 3, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    Why do you want to hold back tanning bed jerb creators?!?!?!

  2. 2.

    ArchTeryx

    March 3, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    This whole repeal bill thing has me more on edge then since right after the election. Basically, it gets to Trump’s desk, it’s only a matter of time before I’m put to the choice of flee the country (if I can even make it out, or get some other country to take me in with no assets and the mother of all preexisting conditions) or die. I enjoyed my time of not being Johnny One Note for a while – it’s too bad I didn’t get many comments in during that time – but it’s all back and worse then ever.

    My only real hope is that one of my recent job interviews actually comes through for me, but I’ve been there before, too, and been rejected every time. Being unemployed (or even self-employed, as I am) for a long time is poison to most employers.

    Otherwise, it’s right back to leaving my mark in one of the last ways I have left to me. *sigh*

  3. 3.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    March 3, 2017 at 1:19 pm

    David, I remember seeing that the ACA included a bunch of pilot programs for finding ways to reduce costs/improve care. Do you know any resources for finding out how those went?

  4. 4.

    laura

    March 3, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    I’m guessing Tan Mom would be in favor of the repeal.

  5. 5.

    hovercraft

    March 3, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    This is what happens when you replace one orange person with another, Orange Julius was said to have been mad about the tanning tax back in ’09, so I guess the Orange shitstain is just as mad, and now he can do something about it.

  6. 6.

    Roger Moore

    March 3, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    OTOH, the tanning bed tax discriminates against white people, since those with darker complexions don’t need to tan.

  7. 7.

    piratedan

    March 3, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    maybe we should impose a surcharge for people who vote for the GOP, because it seems that no matter what we do, when we put them in charge, the rest of us end up paying for it one way or the other.

  8. 8.

    Zinsky

    March 3, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    I live in a metropolitan area with a lot of medical device companies, which notoriously gouge customers due to the super high mark-ups they charge, ostensibly to offset their R&D costs ACA put a 2-3% excise tax on these rip-off artists and you would think you had given them a vasectomy without anesthesia! They squealed like little pigs (which is exactly what they are). These greedy vultures have made billions in profit and when asked to give back a measly two percent of that profit, they act like they will never eat again! Screw them! Tax them into bankruptcy!!

  9. 9.

    Patricia Kayden

    March 3, 2017 at 1:45 pm

    @ArchTeryx: Genuinely hoping that everything works out for you because we all need access to affordable healthcare.

    Given the current political atmosphere, looks like emigration may be your best option. Republicans are determined to destroy the ACA and I doubt they’re going to come up with a viable replacement. They’ve made it plain how they feel about the 99%.

  10. 10.

    MJS

    March 3, 2017 at 1:50 pm

    I’m all for the tax, but I don’t think this is necessarily true:

    “…so it reduces tanning bed utilization compared to the counterfactual of no tax.” It may have been intended to do so, but without 1) evidence of reduced use of tanning beds since the implementation of the tax and 2) surveys or other data showing the tax, and not some other reason (such as people making healthier choices, an increase in spray-on tans, etc.), as being behind the reduction, I think it’s a pretty big jump to claim that the tax results in a reduction in use. It could just result in people paying more for tanning, and less for other things.

  11. 11.

    schrodingers_cat

    March 3, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    I don’t understand tanning, why pay to look like the people who you hate for their skin tone?

  12. 12.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    March 3, 2017 at 1:59 pm

    Approximately 1% of the tanning bed user base gets cancer from tanning bed use according to the estimate.

    So Trump’s odds of coming down w/ skin cancer are about 100 to 1?

    We need something w/ better odds…

  13. 13.

    MJS

    March 3, 2017 at 2:02 pm

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: I think he’s a spray-on guy. I can’t imagine someone’s skin actually turning that shade based on exposure to light. As to why he would choose that particular shade, he isn’t known for his taste. Just look at this hair.

  14. 14.

    Keith P.

    March 3, 2017 at 2:05 pm

    Your treatment options for skin cancer will either be getting in to see Dr. Martin Van Nostrand or some rando who points at it and goes “It’s naht a too-muhhhh!”

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    March 3, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    There is an actual historical reason: it shows that you are a person of the leisure class who has time to go on fabulous tropical vacations and get a tan, unlike the drones who work in a factory 6 days a week. Pale skin was a marker of the upper class until poor people stopped being farm laborers and started being factory workers.

    Also, Coco Chanel is to blame.

  16. 16.

    hovercraft

    March 3, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    It also means you are anti this boy being alive:

    One paragraph of Obamacare saved this boy’s life

    A baby was born 6 days after an Obamacare regulation – and it made all the difference.

  17. 17.

    Pogonip

    March 3, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    @ArchTeryx: I’m praying for you.

    I keep expecting the unwieldy U.S. medical system to collapse, so we considered emigration. Nobody wants the autistic. Or the old. If California splits off from the U.S. maybe they’ll take us as medical refugees or something. Or the system may stumble along for another 10-20 years and maybe there’ll be a cure for autism. I keep hoping (hate moving, for one thing!).

  18. 18.

    Frank Wilhoit

    March 3, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    I’m missing something. How can the makers or operators of tanning beds make enough money to buy this? And if they didn’t buy it, then W T Actual F ?

  19. 19.

    David Anderson

    March 3, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    @MJS: You’re assuming that the demand curve is not downward sloping? That is a mighty strong assumption that really needs to be defended.

  20. 20.

    germy

    March 3, 2017 at 3:08 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I don’t understand tanning, why pay to look like the people who you hate for their skin tone?

    And they pay plastic surgeons to inject collagen into their lips.

  21. 21.

    MJS

    March 3, 2017 at 3:25 pm

    @David Anderson: I believe the demand for tanning to be highly inelastic. I would be surprised if the 10% increase in the cost of it had much if any impact on utilization. A quick search indicates that all the usual suspects (Breitbart, Fox News, etc.) blame the tax for the closure of every single tanning salon in the last 5 years, but I’d be very surprised if they did any research to support that conclusion, or compared that rate with the previous rate of closures. Put another way, I’m skeptical that someone willing to pay $20 for a tanning session (a high example) would balk at paying $22 for the same session.

    Then there’s also this:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/29/indoor-tanning-increase/5028431/

  22. 22.

    cmorenc

    March 3, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Paying for a tanning bed is purchasing skin cancer on the installment plan. Going to a tanning bed place to tan the parts of your body that are otherwise protected by your clothing is a particularly stupid form of vanity.

  23. 23.

    Ohio Mom

    March 3, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    @Pogonip: My family is in the same place — who would want two late middle-aged people, both with medical conditions, and a young adult on the spectrum? And even if someplace would actually want us, what a strain on us to move. We aren’t good candidates for starting over anymore.

    I went to a conference this morning for families with children with disabilities. The person staffing the county disabilities services board’s booth told me, “You know the day will come when there aren’t any more disability services?” I’ve known her for years, she is smart and knowledgeable and has both feet on the ground. She doesn’t do hyperbole.

    Who knows, we may be next to you on that medical refugee line.

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