Thank You For Smoking, Eating Hubig’s Pies and Elmer’s Chees Wees

April 13, 2012 1

Thank You For Smoking, Eating Hubig’s Pies and Elmer’s Chee Wees
©2012 Mike Church

In a letter to the Times Picayune Ochsner-New Orleans CEO Dr. Patrick Quinlan waxes Hyppocratic over the “healthcare costs” that accrue to Louisiana smokers. Quinlan claims that smoking runs up the Who Dat healthcare tab* by $1.47 BILLION every year. Wow, just imagine how many “Bridge May Ice In Cold Weather” signs that could pay for! What Quinlan and the rest of the smoking KGB don’t tell you is that the dreaded $1.47 billion is only a smidgeon of the $30.8 BILLION** LA residents spend on healthcare***. But if ending smoking is our ticket to healthcare heaven, what else can we attack to whittle “healthcare costs” down?

We could start by banning snacks made from unhealthy crops like evil, fat inspiring white potatoes. The ZappCare Act would take care of that and leave the cholesterol pushers in Gramercy reduced to marketing Cajun Crawmators. What about that most despicable of portly pie pushers: Hubig!? The Portly Pie Pusher Act would remove the temptation of Who Dats to keep consuming Savory Simon’s famous FRIED pies****, sparing millions of miles of clogged arteries and bulging waistlines. The Hubigs can find work selling Hubig’s Famous New Orleans Style Peas. At this rate, Ochsner will spend 1/2 it’s profits importing Fat Bastard patients from Mississippi!

Then there’s the Chunk the Chee Wees Act, after all, what could be hogging up more bedspace at Ochsner than Coonass-couch taters munching down bags of Chee Wees? In the end, Dr. Quinlan’s push to repeal a 20 year old Act that designates smokers as a protected class is, from a [r]epublican point of view, admirable BUT this is done in the warped context of employers choosing lifestyles for employees through the “benefit of health insurance”. And as long as folks are ignorant to this distortion of the market the BILLIONS squandered every year in “healthcare costs” for whatever our tasty habits are, will continue to rise sure as Reislings French Bread dough does.

*http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/04/smokers_shouldnt_be_a_protecte.html#incart_mce
** http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/22000.html
*** http://www.statehealthfacts.org/profileind.jsp?cat=5&sub=143&rgn=20
**** http://www.hubigs.com/pg-2-7-history.aspx