@Dutchess_III Physicists and Engineers love Fermi problems. You use data that is available and make estimates for what is not. With sufficiently large number of variables the errors cancel out resulting in a surprisingly accurate result.
Fermi Problem: Calculate how much more a smoker should pay to cover the cost of smoke induced lung cancer.
Assumptions:
300,000,000 people in the US.
Half are adults ->150,000,000
16.1 % of adults are smokers From UNEC site. Call it 1/6 for easy math (FEM) = 25,000,000 smokers
15% of lung cancer cases are in non-smokers, therefore 85% are. FEM let’s call it 100% (That will give us an error of 7%. – Ignore for now. )
200,000 cases of lung cancer diagnosed every year, half are fatal within one year.
Health care cost for smoking related lung cancer is $96B. FEM call it 100B per year. 162B if lost productivity is included. Let’s ignore that.
Out of 25M smokers, 200,000 will get lung cancer. 1 chance in 125 with half dying in one year.
$100B heath care / 200,000 lung cancer = $500,000 per lung cancer patient.
Let’s do a sense check for health care cost: chemo $100k, radiation $100k, surgery $150k, therapy, drugs $80,000 = $430,000 per person (Close enough to $500,000)
Odds of smoker getting lung cancer 1/125 from above. Odds of nonsmoker ¼200
Average annual cost of treatment divided by odds = $500,000 / 125 = $4000 per year or $333 per month per smoker
Correct 7% error from fourth assumption above: 333.x 1.07= $356 per month
Fermi Result: Ignoring productivity losses and cost of premature death, the average cost of health care for a smoker is $356 per month more than that of a non-smoker.
So, if you are only paying $200 more, that means others are paying $156 for you. Divide by the number people paying for health care, let’s say half (FEM). That means everyone is paying 1/10,000 cent for you every month. You’re welcome. ;-)
(Not too far off from the number you gave.) Feel free to use your own assumptions and method. I intentionally did not cite sources as that would bias other people’s results to match mine. Fermi problems are fun, don’t you think?