Email Message Warns about Canadian Health Care

 
Friday's Urban Legend: MOSTLY FALSE

The email message begins with,

This was sent from Canada to a friend in the States.

I saw on the news up here in Canada where Hillary Clinton introduced her new health care plan. Something similar to what we have in Canada. I also heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada in his latest movie. As your friend and someone who lives with the Canada health care plan I thought I would give you some facts about this great medical plan that we have in Canada.

First of all:

1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month of $96 for Shirley and I to be covered. Sounds great eh. What they don't tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes. A large portion of that and I am not sure of the exact amount goes directly to health care our #1 expense.

Snopes.com has examined all the claims in this email message and found that most of them are without merit [Canadian Health Care]. For example, there is not a single health care plan in Canada. There are thirteen different ones, one for each province and territories. Most of them do not charge premiums but the British Columbia plan does and it would cost $96 per month for a family of two. This part of the message is partially correct.

The part about taxes is not. Here's what Snopes.com says.

The highest federal income tax rate in Canada is 29% (for persons with annual taxable income over $120,887), and the highest provincial income tax rate in British Columbia is 14.7% (for those with annual taxable incomes over over $95,909). The typical upper-income level Canadian taxpayer is not in a 55% tax bracket.

By way of comparison, a typical upper-income level American taxpayer residing in California pays a roughly equivalant share of his income (40%-45%) in combined federal and state taxes, even though the U.S. has no national health insurance program.

There are many issues concerning health care and whether the USA should adopt socialized medicine like most civilized countries. It doesn't help when people are spreading false information.

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