Canada vs. America: Health Care, Taxes

One of my favourite writers is Amy Alkon, based out of Los Angeles. In the comments of this recent piece, her and some others delved into the cost of health care in America. Here's the comment I left:

This idea that health care insurance costs are out of control in the U.S. is pure fantasy IMO.

Amy is 45 and pays $300 per month.

I'm a year younger and pay $52 per month here in Canuckistan. I don't have a personal doctor because when my last one moved away it has become exceedingly impossible to find one who will take patients (and I live in a very urban area!). So if I get sick my alternatives are to go to a clinic or go to the Emergency at the local hospital. From anecdotal evidence from friends, I know that the wait each time will be in the order of 2 - 6 hours. Is that the "great" health care system you Americans are looking for?

Getting back to cost, here's a calculator to determine what Canadians pay in income tax. Plus, in BC we pay 12% sales tax (5% federal + 7% provincial) on most everything we buy.

How does our income & consumption tax compare with where you live?

Berner's Driving Queens

David Berner is a Vancouver media personality and fellow blogger. He's famous for many things, one of them being that he seems to be more cursed than anyone else to have unfortunate run-ins with crazy female drivers! From now on, I'm going to refer to such women as "BDQs", short for "Berner's Driving Queens".

Today, I encountered one. I was walking along Granville Street, between 13th & 14th Avenue, when I came upon a 40-something blonde yuppie screaming at a parking meter checker, a young Asian fellow. Normally I have no sympathy for these parking enforcement people but this situation was somewhat different.

She was telling him "how outrageous and unfair" it was that he had issued her a ticket. I'm not clear whether her meter time had expired but she was definitely being cited for letting her car insurance expire. You might think that it had just expired at the end of January and she had forgotten to renew it. I looked at the rear license plate, where the car insurance sticker is prominently featured on every B.C. registered car. It had, in fact, expired LAST JUNE!!!

This silly twit, this hot-air bag of self declared importance, had thought nothing wrong with taking her yuppified Jeep, a potential killing machine, out onto the roads of Vancouver on a wet & snowy day WITHOUT ANY INSURANCE!!! Had she hit anyone or anything, said victim would have had no automatic recourse to seek damages from her without going to a whole lot of trouble.

Dear Ms. Arrogant Self-Absorbed Windbag, you should count yourself lucky with just getting a ticket. If I were a cop encountering you, I would have had your car impounded and you possibly arrested ... just for being the complete asshole that you proved yourself to be today!