Nadeem Esmail Senior Fellow and Jason Clemens Executive Vice President The Fraser Institute

Paul Martin and the Liberals are trying to make healthcare the wedge issue in this election. Their contention is that Canada cannot reduce tax rates, as proposed by the new Conservative Party, while simultaneously providing socialized healthcare. Martin’s assertion is based largely on a comparison between tax levels and health spending in Canada and the United States.Surprisingly, Mr. Martin as a former finance minister seems grossly misinformed about the link between public healthcare spending and taxes. Unfortunately, the mythology that Canada needs high taxes to finance socialised healthcare is an all too common belief shared by many Canadians. This myth impedes a full and frank discussion regarding both healthcare reform and tax relief and as with any myth, the only way to fully dispel its lure is through the examination and dissemination of facts.

Let’s first look at the difference in taxes between Canada and the United States. . . Canadian governments extracted 41.2 percent of all goods and services produced in Canada (GDP) in 2003. Governments in the United States, on the other hand, collected 31.0 percent of GDP. In other words, Canadian governments took one-third more than their southern counterparts as a percent of the economy (GDP).

Some of the explanation for this difference is obviously bound in the fact that the U.S. is running a large deficit while Canada is generally in a balanced position. The U.S. government is currently spending almost 5 percentage points of GDP more than it is collecting in revenues. Some of that largesse relates to military spending but there is a significant component of discretionary spending in areas such as education, agriculture, and transportation.

The myth that taxes equal healthcare argues that this rather large difference is required in order to provide public healthcare in Canada. The implication being that public (i.e. government) spending on healthcare in Canada must be large enough relative to that of the US to explain most of the differences in taxes. The reality is, however, quite different.

In 2001, the most recent year for which comparable data is available, US governments spent 6.2 percent of GDP on public healthcare while Canadian governments spent 6.9 percent of GDP, a difference of 0.7 percentage points. Interestingly, the amount spent by U.S. governments on public healthcare is set to soar due to a generous prescription drug benefit that was recently added to Medicare. Canadians tend to conveniently forget the two massive public healthcare programs in the United States: Medicaid (for the poor) and Medicare (for the elderly). . .

See more at:

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/martins-misinformation-taxes-and-healthcare#sthash.fR1MW5p1.dpuf

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/martins-misinformation-taxes-and-healthcare

Read the entire report at The Fraser Institute . . .

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Medical Myths originate when someone else pays the medical bills.

Myths disappear when Patients pay Appropriate Deductibles and Co-payments on Every Service.