Canadian Straw Man: More ads claim that Congress is pushing a Canadian-style health care bill

[Katie]

Hi Kathy. I just wrote out a long post and it disappeared when I hit a button on this new %$#@ keyboard.

Unfortunately it is not really simple. Anyway, the short of it is that if I remember our conversation correctly, your insurance premiums almost made up for the extra taxes we pay, is that right?

Our system is broken. But I still would rather have the assurance of going into the hospital for my MRI and the emergency department like I did on Friday night and have it all without extra charges.

Another American friend suggested that the better way to go would be to enforce every citizen down there to have health insurance from private companies, much like car insurance. I assume that you have to have that there as we do?

The increased number of premiums from many more citizens would in theory enable the private insurance companies to lower their fees, so everyone could afford them. It sounds great in theory

Most of you know of the struggle I have had in getting treatment here. But how many down there can't get spine treatment either? We are both free to go out of country or to other doctors who will treat us, for a nice price. We all pay, one way or another.

Our biggest problem here and the reason we have huge wait times is because the governments will not allow the surgeons to practice. They only allow so many hours of operating time per day/week/ whatever. We have operating rooms sitting idle because there is no budget to pay the nursing staff or doctors. Everyone gets jaded and many leave for the states.

The tax list I provided above was for our province. There are several others who have much higher rates, like Nova Scotia. That was one reason we moved. Higher taxes and fewer services because of a smaller population.

This is a fascinating conversation, especially watching your country try to sort out your health care. We have heard of many people slipping through the cracks there, as they make too much for social assistance for health care, but not enough to pay their premiums or hospital bills.

Yes, we do have extra private insurance here as well, that covers things like chiropractors, eye care and dentistry. It usually is covered half and half by employers and employees. And we can update our coverage for hospital rooms,etc. Several provinces are beginning to allow two tier systems, with more private services that individuals can pay for and get faster. I think it is great. It should help clear the system so those that can't pay will get treated faster.

My two cents worth! I would love to answer more questions so the facts are clear and the arguments fair.

[KBear]

Using our real income and expenses, for last year, according to the tax rates you have posted for your province, my husband and I would fall into the highest taxed category. Our taxes yearly would then be $55,692. Our health insurance premiums for last year were $7,713; co-pays, prescriptions, eye glasses, lab work, and everything else medical related was $8,962 . For a total of $16,675, that's a difference of $39,017.

We live in Texas and have no state sales tax here, just the IRS tax. We pay 8.25% sales tax when purchasing items (groceries are tax exempt). We are also small buisness owners, and therefore are able to write off many off our expenses. For example, we write off all of our health insurance premiums pre-tax. We don't pay anything in monthly, no 'tax' is taken out of our money that goes to the IRS. At the end of the year, when we do our taxes, we are able to write many things off, which puts us in a lower tax bracket. We usually owe $7-8K in taxes; but since we have children, are married, qualify for the earned income tax credit and other things, we end up being owed $10k. They then take the 7k we owe out of th 10k owed to us and we get a refund check for $3,000 (even though we do not pay anything in, whatsoever.)

If you add that $3,000 refund in, the difference in what we pay now, including all health care and income taxes, we would pay $42,017 more a year to live where you live in Canada. That is more than our house payment, car payment, auto insurance, electric/water bill, gas, and groceries for a family of 4 combined every year! We would go bankrupt and not be able to afford much of anything with those taxes.

I also think that we need to make healthy people have insurance and pay into the system. This would help the insurance companies bottom line and also prevent those same people from sucking up tax dollars when they do get sick and can't pay, then the goverment ends up paying for them.

I completely agree with Rhatzy that this healthcare that is being proposed will bankrupt our nation. Our goverment programs like medicare, medicaid and social security are all going bankrupt and do not work as intended (there are plenty of medicaid people who can not find a doctor who accepts medicaid, long waits, harder to get services, etc.); what makes us think that healthcare would be any different?

Also, as a small buisness owner, we do not provide insurance to our employees. Not that we wouldn't love to, the money is just not there to do so. If we were 'required' to provide them insurance, we would have to fire them and do the work ourselves or shut the company down, there is no way we could provide them insurance and keep the company in the plus. What happens if lots of buisnesses go under? Or fire employees? Unemployment goes up, more people jump in on the national healthcare, while less people are paying in, because they are jobless, the healthcare bankrupts.

[Katie]

Kathy, if the insurance costs were reduced by making everyone have insurance though, that would make it feasible for providing coverage to your employees, would it not? In our extended health care, the employer pays half and the employee the other half, and it is usually about $100 or so each.

I know we discussed these things before a bit, but the difference still stuns me. You fellows get to write off the mortgage interest as well? I think I heard that somewhere before. No such luck here.

But there is something wrong here. Our country is in pretty good financial shape. Until this government came in, we were in a surplus. Now we are horrified because the deficit is about $8 billion. While we are still involved in a war with Afghanistan, we still don't have the huge deficit that the US has.

I have not had a chance to go through the original post, but on the surface it seems that there may be a lot of misinformation going on with your government's new plan. Are they not actually thinking of enforcing the mandatory universal insurance?

[Katie]

That was in no way directed at you Kathy, just a question about how the system might work differently. I am at such a disadvantage, knowing so little about your country and its politics, for which I'm somewhat embarrassed.

But when you do the math, you sure are better off financially than us, it seems.

[KBear]

Yes, we can write off our mortgage interest and property tax.

[KBear]

[D]espite the too-large fraction of those who are not insured, if you judge by disease survival rates, Americans are relatively healthy and well-serviced by their health care system. For diabetes, heart and circulatory disease and strokes, the incidence rates and the number of years lost to sickness are firmly in the middle of the European spectrum.
For many cancers, incidence rates are high in the US. This could, of course, indicate noxious lifestyles, but it equally may suggest more vigilant diagnosis. Whatever the reason, cancer mortality rates are surprisingly low. The US has a higher incidence than any western European nation of breast cancer, for example, but the percentage of women who actually die of the disease is at the lower end of the European scale. And for the four major cancer killers (colorectal, lung, breast and prostate cancer), all European nations have worse survival rates than the US.

[KBear]

I do think that the latest plan to be introduced, which mandated coverage for everyone, penalized those without it and/or gave those a tax break with it, mandated that carriers accept everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions and I believe has co-op type pools- where the self-employed can go in together and get a group type policy and the better rates; is a great start. I think there should also be regulations that insurers have to approve FDA approved surgeries and procedures, cost control for us, and no rate hikes because someone is sick.