Have Not Nation

The interesting Bill Carroll of CFRA commented on the headline that an American family pays $2500 per year on Health Care. Instead of taking the occasion to trumpet how smug we are with our "free" health system he made the seemingly obvious point that we pay for it somehow usually through taxes and are paying for unlisted services in any case in addition. He then went on to make the more surprising proposal that we adopt what every other country except us and the UK have - a mixed system. However, he went on to suggest that our public system only be for the poor and that we pay for our own insurance otherwise. I'm impressed.

Although, the real headline is this: in our increasingly Have Not country, we now earn about 33% less than the Americans. The total part of their pay of 62-65000 represented by health is 4%. If we are paying at least that much in taxes for ours, it means 6-7% of our 43000. Meanwhile their 2500 pays for a much better system (no wait times, no doctor shortages, the best drugs and facilities in the world) and ours does not. Also, they are already paying thousands less every year than us for everything from cars to airline tickets to cell phones to milk bags.

Kudos to Carroll for thinking outside the box on an issue that is taboo for our politicians (another thing we have not - real debates about the biggest issues). But, I wonder if even Carroll let alone the average low paid Canadian realizes how we trail the Americans in (as Piers Morgan put it) in every economic and also several social metrics. I've no doubt that, if Canadians were polled about the issue, they would guess we earn at least as much as the Americans. And I suspect that is just how our low-performing, mediocre, self-serving politicians like it.

And it's now 193 days to go for Disallowance of Bill 21...

(I will be talking more about my new theme of our Have Not Nation in a future blog)