You're never too old to quit smoking

According to US Government officials you're never to old to quit smoking, announcing that Medicare will immediately start covering the cost of counselling for certain beneficiaries who want to quit tobacco.

Mark McClellan, administrator for the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services says the new smoking cessation program has the potential to save and improve lives for millions of seniors. Only those who have an illness caused by tobacco use or complicated by tobacco use will qualify for the new Medicare benefit.

Officials as yet do not have an estimate of how much the new program will cost or how many people will be eligible for it. The benefit will only cover counselling sessions and not the cost of nicotine patches and gum or products aimed at helping smokers quit. About 300,000 senior citizens die annually from smoking-related illnesses, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

A pilot program was operated in seven states between November 2002 and December 2004. Jim Coan, the official who monitored it, said the government paid about $32 for each counselling session, which usually lasted from three to 10 minutes. Each participant was allowed a maximum of four claims per year. 7,500 people participated in the program, far short of the goal that had been set; Coan does not have cost estimates for the program. Any Medicare beneficiary living in one of the seven pilot program states could participate. The new nationwide benefit, however, covers only those with smoking-related illnesses or complications. Dr. Ronald Sturm, a senior economist with the RAND Institute, says Medicare's decision to limit the annual benefit to two cessation attempts per year - each including a maximum of four counselling sessions - would limit the program's costs. He thought it unlikely elderly people who have smoked throughout much of their life would quit smoking in their last few years unless they are facing a life-threatening scenario, and they are not the best candidates to quit smoking.

The American Medical Association however welcomes the government's move and says they believe seniors actually have a better chance of successfully quitting smoking than do people in other age categories.Dr. Ronald Davis, an AMA trustee says studies have shown that seniors who try to quit smoking are 50 percent more likely to succeed than all other age groups, and seniors who do quit can reduce their risk of death from heart disease to that of non-smokers within two to three years after quitting.