Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration could appeal the court ruling, but no announcement was made on Friday.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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Security boosted for Orange County gun show

As the nation debates the idea of new gun laws, the decades-old Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds this weekend will be business as usual, organizers said — with the exception of increased security.

The fairgrounds, whose relationship with the Utah-based Crossroads company spans nearly 25 years, receives about $600,000 from parking, rent, food and beverages from the shows, which are held several times a year, said Jerome Hoban, chief executive of the O.C. Fair & Event Center.

"We're increasing the security because these gun shows are wildly popular, and we want to make sure it's a secure and safe event," he said. "With more people, it's more security, and that's with any event."

Gun shows are under scrutiny from local governments nationwide following the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting last month and after accidents at three recent gun shows left five people injured. The Glendale City Council this week took the first step toward banning gun shows and banning all firearm sales on city-owned land.

Also motivated are gun enthusiasts who fear new regulations; they are stocking up on ammunition and guns. The recent Ontario gun show, also sponsored by Crossroads, was packed.

The state-run fairgrounds has its own on-site security and contracts with the Orange County Sheriff's Department for supplemental help.

Four deputies are scheduled to patrol the show, in addition to the two at the fairgrounds' weekly Orange County Market Place, said sheriff's Sgt. Scott Baker.

"We're not foreseeing any problems," he said. "I know there is a heightened sense with all the stuff going on, but we haven't addressed it any further than that."

Having four deputies on patrol is more than have been on hand for past shows, Baker said.

"It's about as safe as you're going to be," he said. "We're not projecting any problems.... We're not going to a higher level because of the situation, or anything of that nature."

Hoban expressed confidence in security at the fairgrounds. "We don't take any event lightly," he said. "If we have the public on our facility, it's our responsibility to keep everything safe."

Sales of handguns and rifles at the show are subject to state and federal mandates, organizers said. "The rules aren't changing because it's a gun show, or you get an exemption. … The rules still apply there," Baker said.

State laws include a 10-day waiting period, valid identification and a registration fee.

"It's not the kind of event where everybody's walking out the door with firearms," Hoban said.

Bob Templeton, owner of Crossroads, said the Costa Mesa show typically draws 10,000 to 14,000 but that number could swell to 20,000 this weekend. "People are concerned about all the discussions at the national level about gun control and so forth," he said.

He said he expected 8,000 people at the recent Ontario gun show but 16,000 showed up — as did some protesters. The Costa Mesa show will have a "free-speech area" for people to voice their opinions, Baker said.

Templeton called the fairgrounds "a very local event." He said about 80% of those who attend the five shows a year live in Orange County.

Despite increased security, some have reservations.

Kevin Wilkes, a Costa Mesa resident and father of a 7-year-old girl, said the event is too close for his liking to Costa Mesa High School, Orange Coast College and parks. He alluded to the recent gun show shootings and the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

"You have kids and sports fields and TeWinkle Park," he said. "It makes you stop and think … we're literally playing with a loaded gun here."

He said he supports the 2nd Amendment but would like to see an assault weapon ban, among other restrictions on gun ownership. He wants a safer environment for his family.

"I don't want to take anything away from people who collect.... I'm gathering most people are good, law-abiding citizens," Wilkes said. "It's just a few who mess it up for everybody else."

bradley.zint@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 25

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

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TODAY’S PUZZLE:

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Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

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“Black Swan” choreographer named dance director of Paris ballet

(Reuters) – French dancer Benjamin Millepied, who was the choreographer of the film “Black Swan,” was on Thursday named director of dance at the Paris Opera Ballet, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious dance companies.

Millepied, 35, who last year married the Oscar-winning star of “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman, with whom he has a son, will take up his new role in October 2014.

The announcement by the director of the Paris Opera, Nicolas Joel, ended months of speculation over the successor to Brigitte Lefevre, director of dance at the Paris Opera since 1995, who plans to retire at the end of the 2013-14 season.

The same position was held for several years by Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who died in 1993.

A statement from Paris Opera said Millepied was born in Bordeaux and trained at the Lyon Conservatory.

He joined the School of American Ballet as a teenager before joining New York City Ballet where he became a principal dancer in 2002.

He was both the choreographer and a dancer in the 2010 film “Black Swan,” a psychological thriller that received five Academy Award nominations and won Portman the best actress award.

Millepied retired in 2011 to focus on choreography and moved to Los Angeles where he founded the L.A. Dance Project, which made its debut last September.

Millepied is also the new face of Yves Saint Laurent‘s men’s fragrance “L’Homme Libre” – French for “The Free Man” – and also features in ads for Air France.

Almost all the 150-plus dancers in the Paris company are trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School with admittance to the corps de ballet decided by an annual competition.

Lefevre joined the Paris Opera Ballet School when she was 8 years old and entered the corps de ballet aged 16, so Millepied’s appointment came as a surprise to many.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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HCA Must Pay Kansas City Foundation $162 Million

HCA, the nation’s largest profit-making hospital chain, was ordered on Thursday to pay $162 million after a judge in Missouri ruled that it had failed to abide by an agreement to make improvements to dilapidated hospitals that it bought in the Kansas City area several years ago.

The judge also ordered a court-appointed accountant to determine whether HCA had actually provided the levels of charitable care that it agreed to at the time.

The ruling came in response to a suit filed in 2009 by a community foundation that was created when HCA acquired the hospitals. Among other things, the foundation was responsible for ensuring that HCA met the obligations outlined in the deal.

The dispute in Kansas City is the second time in recent years that HCA has come under legal fire from officials in communities that sold troubled nonprofit community hospitals to HCA.

In another dispute in New Hampshire in 2011, a judge ruled in HCA’s favor, deciding that Portsmouth Regional Hospital would remain part of HCA after community leaders tried to regain control. During testimony in a 2011 trial, a former hospital official claimed he had difficulties getting HCA to pay for what he and others described as critical equipment and facility upgrades.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesman for HCA said the company was disappointed in the court’s ruling and intended to appeal. He also added that the two cases were “rare exceptions” and that the company had enjoyed positive relationships with communities across the country.

The suit is among several problems for HCA. The company disclosed last year, for example, that the United States attorney’s office in Miami had subpoenaed documents as part of an inquiry to determine whether unnecessary cardiology procedures had been performed at HCA hospitals in Florida and elsewhere. At stake in that case is whether HCA inappropriately billed Medicare and private insurers for the procedures. HCA has denied any wrongdoing.

Financially, Thursday’s judgment is a slap on the wrist for HCA, which posted net income of $360 million in just the third quarter of last year. But the ruling may reverberate beyond HCA as communities across the country put their troubled nonprofit hospitals up for sale.

In many cases, the buyers with the deepest pockets have been profit-making hospital chains that want to convert the community hospitals to profit status, typically agreeing to spend money to fix them and to maintain certain levels of charitable care in the community.

In 2011, for instance, Vanguard Health Systems, which went public that year and has as its largest shareholder the private equity firm Blackstone Group, bought eight hospitals in Detroit. As part of that deal, Vanguard Health agreed to spend $850 million over five years to fix and maintain the hospitals.

The trouble in the Kansas City area began a year after HCA acquired a dozen hospitals from Health Midwest in 2003 for $1.125 billion. As part of the deal, HCA agreed to make $300 million in capital improvements in the first two years and an additional $150 million in the following three. The hospital chain also agreed to maintain the levels of care that had been provided to low-income individuals and families in the area for 10 years.

But when the members of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, a nonprofit created from the proceeds of the sale of the hospital, received their first report from HCA in 2004 they discovered the hospital was already way behind.

Of the $300 million it was supposed to spend in the first two years, its own documents showed it had spent only about $50 million, according to Mark G. Flaherty, one of the founding members of the foundation and its general counsel.

HCA’s reports to the foundation also indicated that the level of charitable care it provided at the system’s large inner-city hospital had fallen while charitable care provided at the more affluent suburban hospital had risen sharply, Mr. Flaherty said.

“That was a big red flag to us,” he said.

After repeatedly asking HCA executives for explanations but receiving none, the foundation sued HCA in 2009. The case went to trial for several weeks in 2011.

HCA argued in the trial that it had met its obligation to spend money on hospital facilities by building two new hospitals at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than repairing older facilities. But Judge John Torrence of Jackson County Circuit Court ruled that the agreement called for improvements to existing hospitals.

He said HCA still owed $162 million of the $300 million it had agreed to spend between 2003 and 2005. He then named a court-appointed forensic accountant to determine whether HCA had met its other capital commitments and whether it provided the charitable care it had said it would.

HCA’s own written statements claimed “differing amounts,” the judge wrote in his ruling. One HCA report said it provided $48 million in charitable care to the area in 2009 while another report on its Web site said it provided more than $87 million. The annual report to the foundation claimed it provided $185 million in uncompensated and charity care that year, the judge wrote.

During the trial, when asked about the widely differing numbers, the president of HCA’s Midwest division and other HCA executives had no explanation.

The money will be paid to the foundation, which will use it to create grants to provide care for uninsured or underinsured families in the area. It is unclear whether the spending on improvements will occur.

Depending on what the court-appointed accountant discovers, HCA may owe even more money, said Paul Seyferth of Seyferth Blumenthal & Harris, which represents the foundation.

“We think they’re going to have a tremendously difficult time convincing anybody that they spent what they claim they spent,” Mr. Seyferth said.

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Storm-Damaged Homes Mean Lower Property Tax Revenues in New York Region

Localities across the New York region, already reeling from the cost of cleaning up from Hurricane Sandy, are confronting the prospect of an even bigger blow to their finances: a precipitous decline in property tax revenues.

The storm damaged tens of billions of dollars’ worth of real estate, especially in coastal areas of Long Island and New Jersey. As a result, localities can no longer expect to reap the same taxes from properties that have lost much of their value — in some cases, permanently.

Without new revenues, state and local officials and Wall Street analysts said, these areas may have to make deep cuts in spending on schools, police and fire departments and other services. They also may be hard-pressed to finance rebuilding.

“Absolutely, this is going to be devastating for several years,” said Ester Bivona, former president of the New York State Receivers and Collectors Association, which represents local tax officials.

The Division of Local Government Services in New Jersey estimated this month that more than a dozen municipalities in the state could lose at least 10 percent of their tax bases. About another 10 face a drop between 5 percent and 10 percent, state and local officials said.

Among the worst hit is Toms River, one of New Jersey’s largest municipalities, with 90,000 people. It recently warned Wall Street that property tax receipts could drop 10 percent to 15 percent, according to its financial disclosure documents.

Down the coast, the tiny borough of Tuckerton lost close to 20 percent of its property tax base. In Sea Bright, nearly half the homes are uninhabitable.

The situation is similar on Long Island, according to interviews with officials there.

The village of Freeport in Nassau County expects that many of its 15,000 homeowners will qualify for reductions in property tax bills, erasing at least 5 percent of property tax revenues and probably far more.

Experts said the looming revenue crisis for localities in the region underscores how natural disasters can have a profound effect long after the debris is gone.

If localities try to raise overall tax rates to make up for looming deficits, they may touch off a backlash from homeowners with undamaged properties.

“My thing is to encourage property owners to not seek reassessments because you’re going to pay on one end or the other,” said Andrew Hardwick, Freeport’s mayor. “If too many people seek reassessment and are successful with it, that means, how do you pay the bills on the other end? You raise the taxes again? It doesn’t make sense.”

Some localities, like Long Beach, on Long Island, had shaky finances before the storm and are now in deeper trouble, according to local budget records. But many others had been on solid financial ground.

Two major bond-rating agencies, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s, have expressed concerns in recent weeks about the fiscal stability of numerous municipalities in the region.

New York City and county governments in New York are far less reliant on property taxes than localities, so they are expected to have an easier time weathering a drop in the value of the tax base caused by storm damage. The city, for example, has its own income and business taxes.

What’s more, the city and county governments in both states have a much broader property tax base than small localities.

The $50.7 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill approved this month by the House of Representatives provides up to $300 million in low-interest loans for localities facing shortfalls. The Senate has supported a similar provision in its own relief package.

But some local officials said such financing was not nearly enough. States themselves have not yet sent aid, and senior state officials said they were not inclined to do so until federal money was exhausted.

“It’s a pretty inescapable conclusion that there will be an impact on the tax base,” said Michael Drewniak, chief spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

“In many instances, we had homes completely wiped out or severely damaged to the point they were rendered uninhabitable,” Mr. Drewniak said. “That left behind rebuildable land but, in the meantime, no ‘improvements’ to tax. In other cases, people may find it cost prohibitive to rebuild at all, depending on their individual circumstances.”

It could be a year or two before the aftereffects are fully understood, given that localities will have to assess damaged properties before lowering property taxes on them.

Griff Palmer contributed reporting.

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Former LAUSD teacher accused of molesting 20 children

A former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of committing lewd acts and sexually abusing 20 children and an adult, law enforcement authorities said.

Robert Pimentel, 57, who taught at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School in Wilmington, was taken into custody by Los Angeles Police Department detectives, who had launched an investigation in March after several fourth-grade girls said they had been inappropriately touched.

Prosecutors filed 15 charges against Pimentel involving a dozen of his alleged victims. The charges involve sexual abuse and lewd acts on a child and cover the period from September 2011 to March 2012, according to court records. Authorities said the teacher is suspected of inappropriately touching children under and over their clothing.

Detectives suspect Pimentel victimized an additional eight children and the adult, LAPD Capt. Fabian Lizzaraga told The Times.

The arrest comes as the nation's second-largest school district has been rocked in recent months by allegations of sexual misconduct involving teachers and students.

In January, a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood was arrested on suspicion of spoon-feeding semen to students in a classroom and taking dozens of photos. Some of the photos show students blindfolded and being fed allegedly tainted cookies.

An audit released in November concluded that the district failed to promptly report 150 cases of suspected teacher misconduct — including allegations of sexual contact with students — to state authorities as required by law. District officials said they have addressed the breakdowns highlighted in the audit.

Wednesday evening, L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy said both Pimentel and the school's principal were immediately removed when the district found out about the allegations in March.

Deasy said he removed the principal because he was "dissatisfied" with how the situation was handled at the school. The principal has not been identified.

Parents at the school were informed within 72 hours after Pimentel was removed from the campus, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing was promptly notified, the district said.

District officials prepared a "notice of termination" for Pimentel and the principal, which they had planned to present to the Board of Education in April 2012, Deasy said. But both employees retired before the board meeting.

He said Pimentel and the principal will receive their full pensions because they retired before the district took action against them.

"Can you go back and fire someone who's already retired? No, you can't," Deasy said.

Detectives launched their investigation of Pimentel after some of the children told their parents they had been abused, Lizzaraga said. The parents then alerted officers at the LAPD's Harbor Division.

Of the 20 children allegedly abused, 19 were students at the school, according to Lizzaraga. He said detectives came across the other child as they gathered evidence.

Deasy told The Times that his recollection was that the adult was a co-worker of Pimentel.

Pimentel, who lives in Newport Beach, had been a teacher with the district since 1974, police said. He was taken into custody shortly after noon Wednesday and was being held on $12-million bail. He is expected to appear in court Thursday.

In the Miramonte Elementary case, former teacher Mark Berndt, 61, is charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct and is awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

The district is facing nearly 200 molestation and lewd conduct claims stemming from Berndt's alleged wrongdoing.

In a separate case, a jury recently awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested while he was in fifth grade at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area.

The teacher in that incident pleaded no contest to two counts of a lewd act on a child and to continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14. He is serving a 16-year prison sentence.

richard.winton@latimes.com

howard.blume@latimes.com

Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez contributed to this report

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 24

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

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Follow @fitzwillie and @geekdads on Twitter.

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Whitney Houston’s mother wonders if she could have saved singer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Whitney Houston’s mother has told People magazine that she questions her skills as a parent and wonders if she could have saved her superstar daughter from the drug use that played a role in her death.

“Was I a good mother?” Cissy Houston, 79, was quoted as telling the celebrity magazine in an advance excerpt released on Wednesday from the magazine’s Friday edition.

“I still wonder if I could have saved her somehow. But there’s no book written on how to be a parent. You do the best you can.”

Whitney Houston drowned accidentally in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub on February 11, 2012, after taking cocaine and after a well-chronicled battle with drug addiction. She was 48.

Cissy Houston, a singer in her own right, talked to People about her daughter’s personal life and career while promoting her upcoming memoir, “Remembering Whitney.”

In the memoir, Cissy Houston says she was not aware of the early “partying” days of her daughter, known to the family as “Nippy.”

“I had no idea about Nippy’s ‘partying.’ And the truth is, back then I didn’t really want to know about it,” she writes, according to excerpts released to People.

Cissy Houston also discussed her daughter’s ex-husband Bobby Brown, who has had his own substance abuse problems and run-ins with the law. “He didn’t help her, that’s for damn sure,” Houston told the celebrity magazine of Brown.

The Grammy-winning singer left behind her only child, Bobbi Kristina, 19, who was hospitalized twice with anxiety after her mother’s death.

Last fall, Cissy, Bobbi Kristina, the singer’s brother and sister-in-law starred in a 14-episode reality show for cable channel Lifetime about their struggle to cope after Houston’s death called “The Houstons: On Our Own.”

Houston told the magazine she was “worried” about granddaughter Bobbi Kristina and “trying to make sure she doesn’t (follow the same path)” as her famous mother.

Cissy Houston’s interview with People, and excerpts from her memoir, can be found in the issue which reaches newsstands on January 25.

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Claudia Parsons)

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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