Canadian vs. American Health Care II
Let's do more numbers on this topic...
Consider an affluent family, an older couple with dependant children forming a household, making $150,000 annually, and paying for family wide health insurance.
In the U.S. their federal tax is $34,177.5 annually. Let's say they're tax conscious so they live in Nevada making their state and local taxes $0.00. Their insurance premiums are going to be quite high being older and having a family. Still lets say just the 2000 average, of $6,772 annually. They pay about $41,000 in taxes and premiums…
In Canada, this same family pays $34,482.77 in federal taxes annually. Not as much difference there as one might expect… This same tx conscious couple now lives in Ontario. Their provincial taxes are $14,213.25 annually… A huge difference! They pay a total of almost $49,000 annually in taxes and premiums… A difference of more that $8000 above that by the U.S. family…
While I have to say, I find a difference of $8000 to be quite large, I have to admit that, like most Americans, I don't live in Nevada. On an income of $150,000, the taxes in Ohio would be $9750… The family would be about than $1750.00 in the red for living in Ohio rather than Ontario…
Most Americans do live in Ohio or a state with comparable state taxes and the wealthy families, like the median income families, pay more than their Canadian counterparts for doing so. Where's the margin here? It seems that something other than financial concerns are the motivating factors.
Whatever it is, people don't stay in the U.S. for the quality of care. Most industrialized nations use socialized medicine or socialized insurance of some form or another; the U.S., Turkey, and Mexico are the odd birds. Those nations with socialized care or some form are not itching to change on either a national or individual level. If their care were substandard to the U.S.'s care, they'd switch to our system or be trying to do so. Nobody is. That silence, that lack of effort to change is a profound indicator of satisfaction with the quality of care elsewhere.
For more quantitiative data, look at the United Nations statitstics on health care. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_simple_data_extract.asp
Pick a variable, the U.S. comes in second to Canada on any relevant metric you might choose… To be fair, there are care metrics NOT tracked by the UN in which the U.S. does score better, heart attack victim mortality being just one. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/110/13/1754
Quality and cost seem to be very close to a wash for most citizens.
Consider an affluent family, an older couple with dependant children forming a household, making $150,000 annually, and paying for family wide health insurance.
In the U.S. their federal tax is $34,177.5 annually. Let's say they're tax conscious so they live in Nevada making their state and local taxes $0.00. Their insurance premiums are going to be quite high being older and having a family. Still lets say just the 2000 average, of $6,772 annually. They pay about $41,000 in taxes and premiums…
In Canada, this same family pays $34,482.77 in federal taxes annually. Not as much difference there as one might expect… This same tx conscious couple now lives in Ontario. Their provincial taxes are $14,213.25 annually… A huge difference! They pay a total of almost $49,000 annually in taxes and premiums… A difference of more that $8000 above that by the U.S. family…
While I have to say, I find a difference of $8000 to be quite large, I have to admit that, like most Americans, I don't live in Nevada. On an income of $150,000, the taxes in Ohio would be $9750… The family would be about than $1750.00 in the red for living in Ohio rather than Ontario…
Most Americans do live in Ohio or a state with comparable state taxes and the wealthy families, like the median income families, pay more than their Canadian counterparts for doing so. Where's the margin here? It seems that something other than financial concerns are the motivating factors.
Whatever it is, people don't stay in the U.S. for the quality of care. Most industrialized nations use socialized medicine or socialized insurance of some form or another; the U.S., Turkey, and Mexico are the odd birds. Those nations with socialized care or some form are not itching to change on either a national or individual level. If their care were substandard to the U.S.'s care, they'd switch to our system or be trying to do so. Nobody is. That silence, that lack of effort to change is a profound indicator of satisfaction with the quality of care elsewhere.
For more quantitiative data, look at the United Nations statitstics on health care. http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_simple_data_extract.asp
Pick a variable, the U.S. comes in second to Canada on any relevant metric you might choose… To be fair, there are care metrics NOT tracked by the UN in which the U.S. does score better, heart attack victim mortality being just one. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/110/13/1754
Quality and cost seem to be very close to a wash for most citizens.
posted by Minotaur at 9:01 AM
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