It's time for a tax revolt in Canada

[The Green Barbarian]

We are so much better off than most Americans.
"

That's the lie that the brainless left would want you to believe, anyway.

[hobbyguy]

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally

You will see there that US taxation is 26% while Canadian taxes are 32% as a percentage of GDP.

Now we look at health care: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS

Canada: 10.4% of GDP
USA: 17.1% of GDP

6.7% differential.

Much of US health care expenditure is private, not through taxation. So roughly half of that is government expenditure - and even that is clearly unfunded given the massive deficits the US runs - which is just a deferral of taxation to future generations.

Given those factors, apples to apples, US taxation is 32.7% so essentially the same as Canada.

There are many other factors that play into the mix. Post secondary education costs versus government expenditures to subsidize them etc.

In the end it is a philosophical difference governed by choice. Health care is a microcosm of that. In the US universality of health care is controversial, and not really pursued in many states. As you said, IF you are healthy health care insurance is cheaper. The choice that Canada made is that everyone should be covered and have a reasonably equitable access to health care. The result is indeed higher costs if you are healthy, but far lower costs when you need health care. Yes, for all of us mortals, it is when you need health care - not if.

The qualitative issue of wait times in Canada is indeed a bit of a debacle. Part of that is due to universality. Part of it is system fossilization (which I and others are doing what we can to break). Canada spends enough money, but has allowed its system to to stay in a 1950s model which builds in massive inefficiencies - but that's a whole 'nother subject.

If you look at the results of Romneycare in Massachusetts you will see that indeed, as Romney's efforts to universalize coverage began to succeed, wait times began to rise significantly. Universality does introduce apparent wait times. In fact, it just exposes the real wait time - by including those who need care but are waiting to accumulate the funds for care, and by including those who would normally not be able to accumulate the funds.

At any rate, I believe that Canadians would prefer the guaranteed access to lower taxes. We just have to fix the wait time issues etc. which really aren't a function of how much we spend, more how we spend it and allocate resources.

Some of the differentials show up here: http://www.prosperity.com/rankings and are a result of philosophical differences on a number of issues.