Healthcare In The USA

If these are the options, lots of people are going to choose the latter option. We can assume this because Americans are not that different to the rest of the world's population, contrary to popular opinion, and this is the way things work in many different countries.The British NHS provides many things free-of-charge, and much else at greatly subsidised rates. Everyone has to pay for the upkeep of this through taxes. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of the population (about 10%, I think) also pays for a private health insurance plan. They do so in order to get services which the NHS won't provide due to being too expensive or of dubious efficacy; in order to get faster access to popular services with long waiting lists on the NHS and/or because they believe a particular private provider will offer a higher standard of care.Here in the Czech Republic, I can go to a government run poliklinika and pay just 30 crowns for my checkup (free until recently, health care reform here means increasing government revenue by bringing in new charges). Alternatively, I could pay much more at a private clinic. Despite the cheaper government option, private clinics have no problem attracting customers by offering a more pleasant environment, additional services and either better care or the impression of better care.

That's the general thrust of things, yes - although I don't know exactly what Obama's proposing and whether it'll be any good. 'Poliklinika', I think, is from the Greek 'poly' for many, as you'll have a general practicioner, an ear, nose and throat specialist, an osteopath, a gynaecologist etc. all in the same place.Another point somebody mentioned that I wanted to address:Socialised medicine doesn't necessarily mean higher taxes, depending on the system involved. US government spending per capita on healthcare is higher than that of Britain, Germany, Japan or many other countries with unversal healthcare provision. Based on WHO figures from 2005, and excluding countries with populations below a million, US government per capita spending on healthcare ranked 8th in the world, and Austria only just tipped them to 7th place.

I tried to read around a bit on the comparative levels of tax paid in the UK, Australia and the US, and it's well difficult to come up with any meaningful figures because tax varies so much from person to person. The tax database of the OECD seems to offer the most useful figures, but it's still hard to make like for like comparisons. This table (it's an excel file) compares the average percentage paid in income tax, including social security contributions, for someone earning an average wage (I think 'average' means 'mean', but it's not clear).Based on this, British taxes seem to be the highest. The ranges are:Australia: 19.1% - 22.6%
UK: 24% - 25.6%
USA: 11.3% - 24.7%with the differences depending on differing tax rules for married couples and people with and without children. If we deduct the money paid to people with chldren by the state from the tax bill of parents, then Brits with children do better, paying just 19.1%, but Australia's child support must be well generous, as it lowers parents' overall tax burdens to just 9.8% of income.

You're not quite right here. These are the tax rates on income earned over the threshold for each band, so someone earning $50,000 is only paying a 30% income tax rate on $16,000 dollars of that income. The tax on someone earning $50,000 comes out to 19.5%. If we're counting the percentage the government takes from the employer's total expenditure, so including all their compulsory contributions to social security, the amount paid is about 26.1%.None of these figures take into account tax offsets, which is why they're higher than the estimate calculated in the OECD Database - they don't count Medicare either, though. These numbers come from the Australian Tax Office and the Britz in Oz wage and tax comparisons site.And sales tax is Britain is 17.5%, so it could be worse.

So, 30c multiplied by 16,000 gives us $4,800. Add this to the $4,200 and we get $9,000, which is actually 18% of $50,000. I took the 19.5% rate direct from the Britz in Oz website, so I'm guessing the discrepancy is explained by them including the 1.5% Medicare levy.Edit: Sorry for dragging out this sidetrack on Australian tax!Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.