Hospital Slots

We humble engineers constructed airfields and helipads for those dashing military aviators back in the day. We would thrill to their mottoes:

"Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse."
"No guts. No glory."
"The pilot's breakfast - a cup of coffee and a cigarette."

Apparently, combining risk-taking and unhealthy personal habits is not limited to aviators. Pennsylvania's eight casinos measured revenue per slot machine in smoking versus non-smoking areas. "Live fast; die young" smokers dropped an average of two times more money per machine than those risk-averse, "hope I live until I'm 100" non-smokers.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board may now authorize casinos to expand smoking areas, but is this wise? Revenues may increase today by opening up more slot machines to those devil-may-care smokers, but what about tomorrow when they are in the emphysema ward piteously coughing and hacking? Casino employees are already up in arms about second-hand smoke.

Here's a win-win scenario. Let's place slot machines in our hospitals! Patients there are no doubt bored to tears and twitchy without their cigarettes. Hospital visitors wouldn't mind some action either. After all, you can only make so many trips to the cafeteria or the gift shop. Hospital slots would be a gold mine.