Health-care Costs for Canadian Families Need to be De-Mystified For a health-care system that is often (albeit erroneously) considered “free,” its cost to taxpayers remains “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” That’s how Winston Churchill termed his dilemma in trying to figure out if Russia was going to be friend or foe in the Second World War. There are a lot of parts to this riddle and understanding how and why a typical family of four must pay an estimated $17,713 for public health care this year ($1,866 more than just two years ago) is worth some scrutiny. According to Nadeem Esmail, senior fellow and lead author of the Fraser Institute’s newly released research bulletin: The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2024: “Canadians pay a substantial amount of money for health care through a variety of taxes – even if we don’t pay directly for medical services – and it’s important for taxpayers to assess the value and performance of the health-care system, and whether it’s financially sustainable.” In unravelling the riddle (and the enigma) of these costs, Esmail and colleagues calculated the following. Family Type Average Cash Income ($) Average Total Tax Bill Tax Rate Health-care Insurance ($) Unattached individuals 55,925 24,122 43.10% 5,629 2 parents, 0 children 147,542 70,824 48.00% 16,528 2 parents, 1 child 171,329 73,693 43.00% 17,198 2 parents, 2 children 176,266 75,904 43.10% 17,713 1 parent, 1 child 72,608 22,903 31.50% 5,345 1 parent, 2 children 80,862 21,032 26.00% 4,908 Health Note: The Average Total Tax Bill for Health-care Insurance (column 2) includes income taxes; property, sales and payroll taxes; import duties; taxes on consumption of alcohol, tobacco and fuel; and, in some provinces, taxes specifically dedicated to health-care insurance. Column 4 represents the amounts which each of the family groups will have paid into their public health-care systems. Table 1: Average income and average total tax bill of representative families, reproduced from Fraser Institute’s Canadian Tax Simulator, 2024. by Milan Korcok 32 | www.snowbirds.org
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