Could say the same about people under 60 not wanting coverage for Alzhemiers, or non smokers opting out of paying for lung cancer cover. It's either universal or it isn't
Wow thank god I live in Canada, I haven't read through every comment but $680 to $2000 a month for insurance! what a scam. Wouldn't you rather a small percentage of your weekly paycheque be deducted automatically so you could have the easy freedom of walking in to any hospital for any reason and get taking care of at no additional charge, and here I thought having to sit in a emergency waiting room for a hour or two was a pain in the ass.
Lenni, if it were only a small percentage then it would be a different story. In Canada you have higher taxes than in the States and you also have the GST. There's no free lunch or health care on either side of the border. In Canada you folks do a much better job of controlling drug costs than we do in the States so that is a huge item. That is one big feature of Canadian health care that I would love to see here in the US.
Another reason to remain unmarried for financial gain! Maybe my hubs and I should get divorced so we have more spending money. THanks Obamacare!! The Hidden Marriage Penalty in Obamacare
Actually, we don't pay much more than you in overall taxes from what I have found. I figured we paid more too and checked. The big differences, I think are: Your military spending vs. ours as a percentage of GDP. I suspect you have more government departments and programs than us. And to hear the complaints I suspect they may be more inefficient and wasteful than ours? (Not that ours are any testimony to efficiency and thrift). I know that our healthcare costs, per person are close to half what yours are. The figures vary depending where you look but it's roughly $3,600.00/person in Canada vs. $6,800.00/person in America. That is huge! We both have chronic users of our healthcare systems that place a heavy burden on them and we would be very wise to examine these cases much more closely to come up with better solutions.
I took the 40% to mean all taxes. Federal, Provincial, Municipal, GST & PST, etc.. I have seen many websites that compare global tax rates and was surprised to see that, all in, on average middle class Canadians pay about the same amount towards taxes as Americans.
I feel bad for my American friends, as well. Honestly, I don't see how you can effectively implement Universal Healthcare through private insurance companies with no regulated costs.
I pay $5600/yr for myself, the wife, and my son for health insurance... And the company pays for the other 66% of my healthcare... So yeah... we get screwed...
You may want to check out the TOS, but I think it's against the rules to come into this sub forum and interject with ACTUAL FACTS....lol. And fact checking? Come on. Who does that? What do you think we have Fox News for? BTW, your last point was a good one, especially in respect to the abusers.
He did mention that 40% comes out of his pay cheque in taxes, so I took that as being payroll deductions, possibly based on his top marginal rate. But reading it again I suppose it is possible to take it the way you thought it was meant. It really is difficult to compare apples to oranges but it seems to be quite convenient to only compare income tax rates in any discussion of healthcare in the US. I don't care if my tax bill is $5000 lower if I have to pay $10,000 health insurance.
