When cigarette smokers quit, societal healthcare costs immediately plunge, a new study shows.
If 10 percent of American smokers gave up cigarettes and the rest cut back by 10 percent, the U.S. could shave $63 billion off medical costs the next year, the analysis found.
"You start to see the benefits quickly, and they're huge because healthcare costs are so gigantic," study coauthor Stanton Glantz told Reuters Health. He directs the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco.
The study is the first to project cost savings within a year of . . .
