This is nonsense intended to make it seem as if the rich pay more than the poor – what Obamacare was supposed to achieve. In reality excise and sales taxes (GST, gas/cigarette/booze taxs) hit the poor much harder than the rich. So the article’s example that someone making $14,641 spends $471 on health care is nonsense: GST alone on half that income is $366 – tax is nearly 70% of the price of gasoline so less than 80 gallons will put that person over the nominal tax amount for that income group.
In reality a simple estimator is total cost / total population. Nominal budget for Alberta is about 22 billion, divide among 3.9 million –> $5,600 per person, man, woman, or child.
Not quite that simple, you excluded government cash payments.
From the GST/HST web site:
“For payments from July 2016 to June 2017, the basic GST/ HST credit for an individual is $276. For families, the credit is $276 for you and $276 for your spouse or common-law partner (or other parent of your child). An eligible child will be credited with $145”
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Health care in Canada may be free to people in terms of out-of-pocket dollars (mostly), but it sure ain’t free in TIME. If you need fast treatment, best go to the States. If you need fast treatment here, you’d better be a pro athlete or a politician, cause nobody else is getting it. Six months, twelve months, eighteen months, more, and you can’t do one damned thing about it. THAT’S the cost of “free” health care.
I have a quibble about calling our medical system “healthcare”. We don’t really have a system to keep us healthy. Most of the cost for our medical system is to treat preventable disease such as diabetes 2 and many of the “sick” people are over-weight, eat a poor diet, have a drug or alcohol addiction or don’t exercise.
A healthcare system would try and keep people healthy, out of the hospital, not treating them with drugs.
Having said that, I have first hand experience with the medical system (a relative) and the quality of medicine care (doctors, operations etc) is very high in Canada. Patient treatment, however, is fairly low and getting worse. The wait times for admission in emergency, the lack of private rooms, the trend toward out-patient or day-patient surgery etc. I feel sorry for people who don’t have help (family) and end up in the hospital for day surgery, then left at home alone with a bottle of pills.
Googled gook numbers. How about giving us a per capita cost for public costs and one for private purchases? I don’t think that’s too much to ask before getting into the income bracket discussion.
“This is nonsense intended to make it seem as if the rich pay more than the poor…”
Even if your “poor person” payed 100% of his $14,641 income on taxes and were dead from the related starvation he would still pay less than half of the estimated health care tax of the rich person. In all likelihood the Fraser Institute used GST and other non-income taxes in their estimate of taxes on that income. Maybe you should read the report and find out.
In a somewhat related story … the ObamaKKare “subsidies” still continue unabated … thank you GOPe! Thank you Paul Ryan … Thank you Mitch McConnel … Thank you John McCain!
Paul Murphy said: “In reality a simple estimator is total cost / total population. Nominal budget for Alberta is about 22 billion, divide among 3.9 million –> $5,600 per person, man, woman, or child.”
Children don’t pay in, Paul. Low income people don’t pay in. Women largely don’t pay in, due to having much lower incomes than men. A healthy percentage of women’s incomes doesn’t cover much more than the daycare costs.
Even using your method, Mom,Dad and two kids is $22,400 Paul. A year. That’s a lot of money. You think a family of four making $60k between them is paying in $22.4k in medicare tax?
The rich -do- pay more. GST and PST are there to grind some money out of the “poor.” Should they pay nothing?
I don t know about other provinces but Ontario,s health care system is in freefall. It can take months to see a specialist in almost any discipline in the medical field regardless of your condition. In reality only about 25-35 % of the population actually pay for most of the cost related to healthcare.The rest are either zero or negative contributors, in other words they pay nothing or consume more than they contribute to the cost of what they receive. The bottom line is that this business model or lack thereof is not sustainable in the long term.
It’s worse than that. 23.5% is the proportion of tax revenue, I guess that includes HST etc.
even those on welfare have to have someone pay for their healthcare.
This type of thinking is what makes me believe that Progressives suffer from a mental disease. They continue to make the same mistakes over and over and always blame someone else for any issues that come up.
the number I read, sometime back was that 46% of the budget went to healthcare. I guess the government has been fudging the numbers again.
I have read the same thing regarding the amount of money that the Ontario Gov. pays into healthcare. About 46% of every dollar they take in goes to healthcare. When you count the amount of money that goes into Welfare and numerous other “social programs” it does not leave much for the cost of maintaining infrastructure.
This is nonsense intended to make it seem as if the rich pay more than the poor – what Obamacare was supposed to achieve. In reality excise and sales taxes (GST, gas/cigarette/booze taxs) hit the poor much harder than the rich. So the article’s example that someone making $14,641 spends $471 on health care is nonsense: GST alone on half that income is $366 – tax is nearly 70% of the price of gasoline so less than 80 gallons will put that person over the nominal tax amount for that income group.
In reality a simple estimator is total cost / total population. Nominal budget for Alberta is about 22 billion, divide among 3.9 million –> $5,600 per person, man, woman, or child.
Not quite that simple, you excluded government cash payments.
From the GST/HST web site:
“For payments from July 2016 to June 2017, the basic GST/ HST credit for an individual is $276. For families, the credit is $276 for you and $276 for your spouse or common-law partner (or other parent of your child). An eligible child will be credited with $145”
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Health care in Canada may be free to people in terms of out-of-pocket dollars (mostly), but it sure ain’t free in TIME. If you need fast treatment, best go to the States. If you need fast treatment here, you’d better be a pro athlete or a politician, cause nobody else is getting it. Six months, twelve months, eighteen months, more, and you can’t do one damned thing about it. THAT’S the cost of “free” health care.
I have a quibble about calling our medical system “healthcare”. We don’t really have a system to keep us healthy. Most of the cost for our medical system is to treat preventable disease such as diabetes 2 and many of the “sick” people are over-weight, eat a poor diet, have a drug or alcohol addiction or don’t exercise.
A healthcare system would try and keep people healthy, out of the hospital, not treating them with drugs.
Having said that, I have first hand experience with the medical system (a relative) and the quality of medicine care (doctors, operations etc) is very high in Canada. Patient treatment, however, is fairly low and getting worse. The wait times for admission in emergency, the lack of private rooms, the trend toward out-patient or day-patient surgery etc. I feel sorry for people who don’t have help (family) and end up in the hospital for day surgery, then left at home alone with a bottle of pills.
Googled gook numbers. How about giving us a per capita cost for public costs and one for private purchases? I don’t think that’s too much to ask before getting into the income bracket discussion.
“This is nonsense intended to make it seem as if the rich pay more than the poor…”
Even if your “poor person” payed 100% of his $14,641 income on taxes and were dead from the related starvation he would still pay less than half of the estimated health care tax of the rich person. In all likelihood the Fraser Institute used GST and other non-income taxes in their estimate of taxes on that income. Maybe you should read the report and find out.
In a somewhat related story … the ObamaKKare “subsidies” still continue unabated … thank you GOPe! Thank you Paul Ryan … Thank you Mitch McConnel … Thank you John McCain!
Paul Murphy said: “In reality a simple estimator is total cost / total population. Nominal budget for Alberta is about 22 billion, divide among 3.9 million –> $5,600 per person, man, woman, or child.”
Children don’t pay in, Paul. Low income people don’t pay in. Women largely don’t pay in, due to having much lower incomes than men. A healthy percentage of women’s incomes doesn’t cover much more than the daycare costs.
Even using your method, Mom,Dad and two kids is $22,400 Paul. A year. That’s a lot of money. You think a family of four making $60k between them is paying in $22.4k in medicare tax?
The rich -do- pay more. GST and PST are there to grind some money out of the “poor.” Should they pay nothing?
I don t know about other provinces but Ontario,s health care system is in freefall. It can take months to see a specialist in almost any discipline in the medical field regardless of your condition. In reality only about 25-35 % of the population actually pay for most of the cost related to healthcare.The rest are either zero or negative contributors, in other words they pay nothing or consume more than they contribute to the cost of what they receive. The bottom line is that this business model or lack thereof is not sustainable in the long term.
It’s worse than that. 23.5% is the proportion of tax revenue, I guess that includes HST etc.
even those on welfare have to have someone pay for their healthcare.
This type of thinking is what makes me believe that Progressives suffer from a mental disease. They continue to make the same mistakes over and over and always blame someone else for any issues that come up.
the number I read, sometime back was that 46% of the budget went to healthcare. I guess the government has been fudging the numbers again.
I have read the same thing regarding the amount of money that the Ontario Gov. pays into healthcare. About 46% of every dollar they take in goes to healthcare. When you count the amount of money that goes into Welfare and numerous other “social programs” it does not leave much for the cost of maintaining infrastructure.