Healthy Living
Report: CT May Be Second Worst State for Average Health Costs from Smoking
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Connecticut cigarette smokers, at least potentially, pay more for their unhealthy habit than smokers in any state except New York, according to a recent report from WalletHub.com. According to the website, the average lifetime cost per smoker in Connecticut is $2,447,965 (only New Yorkers have a higher cost: $2,458,044). That mostly comes from a high “financial opportunity cost” of $1,641,730 but also includes out-of-pocket costs, health-care costs, lost income and other costs (see table, below). WalletHub.com explained what they mean by “financial opportunity cost” this way:
“To determine the per-person Financial Opportunity Cost, we calculated the amount of return a person would have earned by instead investing that money in the stock market over the same period. We used the historical average market return rate for the S&P 500 minus the inflation rate during the same time period to reflect the return in present-value terms.”