Big tax rise proposed

A coalition of health-advocacy groups in the US state of Montana want cigarette taxes to rise by $2 a pack to help maintain an expansion of Medicaid, which is a joint federal and state program that helps with medical costs for some people with limited income and resources.
According to a story by Eric Whitney for New Hampshire Public Radio, Montana legislators
expanded Medicaid by a very close vote in 2015.
The measure passed with the condition that the expansion of Medicaid eligibility in the state would expire in 2019 unless lawmakers voted to reapprove it. And once it expired, people who benefited from Medicaid under the expansion would lose that benefit.
Fearing legislators might not renew funding for Medicaid’s expanded rolls, Montana’s hospitals and other health advocacy groups came up with a ballot measure to keep it going with funds generated by a tobacco tax.
Whitney said in his report that the measure, which is on today’s ballot, became the most expensive ballot measure race in Montana’s history – drawing more than $17 million in opposition funding from tobacco companies alone, and in a state with fewer than 200,000 smokers.
Most of that money had come from cigarette maker Altria, he said, and, according to records from the National Center for Money in Politics, that amount was more than Altria had spent on any state proposition nationwide since the center started keeping track in 2004.
Amanda Cahill, who works for the American Heart Association and is spokesperson for Healthy Montana, the coalition backing the measure, said coalition members knew big tobacco would fight back.
“We poked the bear, that’s for sure,” Cahill said, though she added that the measure had been introduced not with the intention of stirring up trouble, but because it was the right thing to do.
If ballot initiative I-185 passes, it will mean an additional $2 per pack tax on cigarettes, and a tax on other tobacco products. It would also levy a tax on electronic cigarettes, which are currently not taxed in Montana.
Nancy Ballance, a Republican representative in the Montana state legislature opposes the measure.
“In general, I am not in favor of what we like to refer to as ‘sin taxes,’ ” Ballance says. “Those are taxes that someone determines should be [levied] so that you change people’s behavior.”