Monday, April 23, 2018

How Much Do Canadians Really Pay for Health Care?

Before deciding to emulate the Canucks, we should consider what they really pay for health care and what they get for their money.

The usual talking point single-payer advocates trot out when asked about this goes thus: According to OECD, health care in the U.S. costs about twice what Canadians pay.

Canadians pay far more for health care than is commonly believed and life expectancy is useless in determining the quality of a health care system.

In order to more precisely estimate the cost of public health care insurance for the average Canadian family in 2017, we must determine how much tax an average family pays to all levels of government and the percentage of the family's total tax bill that pays for public healthcare insurance.

Which brings us back to what Canadians get for their money: First, as to the canard that life expectancy and infant mortality serve as useful measurements of a health care system's efficiency, David Hogberg debunked that nonsense more than a decade ago: "Life expectancy and infant mortality are wholly inadequate comparative measures for health care systems. Life expectancy is influenced by a host of factors other than a health care system, while infant mortality is measured inconsistently across nations." On the other hand, Canada has lots of waiting lists.

Even the Commonwealth Fund, in a publication devoted to trashing U.S. health care, ranked the quality of Canada's system right down there with the Great Satan, noting large percentages of seriously ill Canadians waiting months to see specialists.

"If the United States adopts socialized Medicine, where will Canadians go to get decent health care?".

https://spectator.org/how-much-do-canadians-really-pay-for-health-care/ 

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