Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
I pay $800 a month for me, my wife, and kid. It has a $3,000 deductible (we have to run up $3,000 a year in medical bills before it pays anything)
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So that's nearly a $10,000 per year expenditure that Canadians don't have to pay. So much for the argument many Americans make about the so-called "high Canadian taxes". I can assure Baddog et al that I pay nowhere near $10k more per year in taxes than US citizens in my same tax bracket. Yet that's usually the first thing out of a lot of Americans' mouths when the subject of Canadian health care comes up -- "Yeah but whut about the TAXES?".
Indeed. What ABOUT the taxes? Fact is it's a fallacious argument. Our lower to middle income tax bracketers pay roughly 20-30% in income tax, so do American tax payers. Our higher earners making six figure+ incomes pay in the 35-45% range, so do high earners in the USA.
We have provincial and federal taxes on goods and services, Americans pay state and federal taxes as well.
The biggest difference I can see is that we don't have to pay any health insurance premiums. Well that and when we go for a simple doctor appointment or an open heart surgery, we recieve no bill afterwards.
As imperfect as it is I wouldn't trade our health care system for a more Americanized one for all the tea in China.