Gubernatorial candidate Doug Duncan, the Montgomery County executive, on Tuesday endorsed doubling the state cigarette tax to $2 a pack as a way to pay for $190 million in health care enhancements for the uninsured.
“I recognize some people may have a problem with” support of a tax increase, Duncan said, but “I?ll support a tax that saves lives rather than one that destroys lives” ? a reference to Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s push for slot machine gambling. He called Ehrlich?s health care achievements all “rhetoric and press releases.”
Vincent DeMarco, president of the Health Care for All coalition, said Duncan was the first statewide candidate to endorse the $1-a-pack hike known as the Healthy Maryland Initiative. That move will “save 50,000 children” from tobacco addiction, DeMarco said, and eventually “save the state billions of dollars” in medical costs.
If elected governor, Duncan said, he would expand health coverage to 30,000 children who are not currently eligible, and he would raise the income ceiling for their parents to 100 percent of the federal poverty level, rather than the current 46 percent.
“No child in Maryland should be without health insurance,” Duncan said at a Woodlawn press conference.
He said he would also “create a $15 million pilot program called the Small Business Health Care Incentive Program to provide grants to small businesses to help them purchase coverage for their workers.”
“This plan is realistic,” Duncan said. “It doesn?t promise the world.”
Ehrlich?s camp scoffed at Duncan?s proposals.
“Doug Duncan is always on the side of higher taxes, Gov. Ehrlich is always on the side of lower taxes,” said Henry Fawell, the governor?s spokesman. “All it does is drive Marylanders across state lines to buy cheaper cigarettes.”
Since the governor took office, total spending on health care “has gone up $1.2 billion and serves 80,000 additional citizens,” Fawell said.
Duncan also urged Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley, his opponent in the Democratic primary, to endorse a new drug treatment initiative for the city. The chief medical examiner in Baltimore City announced Tuesday that the number of drug overdose deaths last year ? 218 ? was the lowest in the past 10 years, down 34 percent in 2005 alone.
“We?re pleased that Doug has endorsed so many of the health care ideas that Martin O?Malley and Anthony Brown have been talking about for months,” said O?Malley communications director Hari Sevugan.
Duncan?s health plan
» Raise cigarette tax $1: $211 million
» Healthy Kids Initiative: $57 million
» Expand Medicaid eligibility: $43 million
» New drug addiction treatment: $32 million
» Total spending increase: $190 million
