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Cigarette excise could help finance health care
Presenting tobacco tax reforms and universal health coverage in an either/or type of argument is a false dilemma.
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On a decline – A tobacco farmer from an areas in the slope of Merapi-Merbabu mountain in Boyolali, Central Java, puts his chopped tobacco leaves in the sun to dry. Dried tobacco is now selling at only Rp 60,000 (US$4.55) per kilogram. (JP/Ganug Nugroho Adi)
A
news article in the July 3 edition of The Jakarta Post titled Cigarette excise ‘can’t’ help finance health care has put illicit trade in tobacco products (ITTP) in the limelight yet again.
For readers, air quotes in the headline are intriguing, even though it is not quite clear what they mean.
In gesture, air quotes signify irony or mockery. In print, a word that is presented as a quotation indicates a scare-line. This practice is often criticized, because readers will miss the clarity of thought.
The article begins with a claim that increasing retail cigarette prices through higher taxes would only fuel the growing ITTP in the country. Therefore, quoting a top government official, national health insurance provider BPJS has been advised to find other means to address its financial woes.
The official then comforts himself by proposing the Direct Allocation from Tobacco Products Excise Sharing Funds (DBHCHT) for national health insurance (JKN) as a means to address the program’s deficit.
First, the entire article is rife with logical fallacies. Second, it is cherry-picking. Injecting this commentary into the media hoodwinks the public into thinking that the economic costs of tobacco tax increases would far outweigh the benefits. Finally, the alternative policy proposed is immature and ignorant.
The first argument in the article contains a familiar fallacy. It directs us to jump to a conclusion about causation based on correlation between two events that occur simultaneously. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), a Latin speaker would say.
