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US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

peoplespolicyproject.org

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Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#21

Post by ylbss »

titanomachy wrote: post #16

The Canadian figures seem insanely low. 11.5% total? When I lived in BC making an approximately average income, my effective tax rate alone was 21% [EDIT: originally put 23%]. I paid pension, health insurance, and unemployment deductions on top of that. And that only counts the employee side of deductions. This example is "married with two kids", so it's possible that there are massive offsets that I didn't have acce…

Maybe federal tax, but that starts at 15%. I mean when they say effective maybe they're talking about the average people pay after deductions?

Who knows, 11% still seems incorrect.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#22

Post by ars »

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"

You can't average averages in this way. You'll get easily manipulated data.

He's using a single average data for a married, single income worker, and combining that with the average for health insurance.

You can't do that. You need to calculate each individual person's income and share of healthcare costs, and only then average the results.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#23

Post by patrickg_zill »

penagwin wrote: post #5

I never understood why people are against some form of universal healthcare. The idea of "socialism" or "communism" scare many conservatives, but it just doesn't make sense here. How universal healthcare sorta works - we all put money in a pot, and use it to pay for healthcare. How health insurance works - we put money into a company, who uses it to pay for healthcare, while taking a significant cut as it's a private…

I grew up in Canada so I totally understand why people are against universal health care... Check out the wait times for MRI scans that are published by the various Canadian provinces. 90 days' wait is not uncommon.

Meanwhile in the US it can be had in 3 days or so in every decent sized suburb or city.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#24

Post by maxxxxx »

a_t48 wrote: post #11
penagwin wrote: post #5

I never understood why people are against some form of universal healthcare. The idea of "socialism" or "communism" scare many conservatives, but it just doesn't make sense here. How universal healthcare sorta works - we all put money in a pot, and use it to pay for healthcare. How health insurance works - we put money into a company, who uses it to pay for healthcare, while taking a significant cut as it's a private…

If you drop those who start costing too much, private insurance could totally be cheaper. :)

The Nazis had that realization :-)

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#25

Post by lordnacho »

I actually spoke to someone today who is hiring a guy from a FANG in SV to go and work in Denmark. He told me taxes are high enough over there it isn't all that different.

Plus like many Americans he was curious about living in Denmark. Cycling everywhere, laid back lifestyle, that sort of thing.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#26

Post by vonmoltke »

arosier wrote: post #12

>It’s just that they pay it into a private insurance system that wastes large portions of it on rents and administrative redundancy. Would love to see a breakdown of real estate and admin costs for private insurance systems throughout the States to understand how much could be saved by eliminating redundancy. Not seeing this broken out in Anthem's Financials: https://ir.antheminc.com/static-files/73562e56-886c-4ff5-a…

> Would love to see a breakdown of real estate and admin costs for private insurance systems throughout the States to understand how much could be saved by eliminating redundancy.

I would love to see the same breakdown for the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland to see how they avoid it.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#27

Post by grigjd3 »

justaman wrote: post #10
penagwin wrote: post #5

I never understood why people are against some form of universal healthcare. The idea of "socialism" or "communism" scare many conservatives, but it just doesn't make sense here. How universal healthcare sorta works - we all put money in a pot, and use it to pay for healthcare. How health insurance works - we put money into a company, who uses it to pay for healthcare, while taking a significant cut as it's a private…

Trusting in a private company that must react to market changes is different than trusting in a government that doesn't listen to you anyway.

Your health insurance company listens to you? Mine just constantly tries to wriggle out of paying.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#29

Post by akhilcacharya »

munk-a wrote: post #17
viburnum wrote: post #8

It’s worse if you include 401k payments to offset a more generous public pension.

Or really any public pension. I feel like if you're <40 then you should be planning for Social Security to not exist when you get old, anything else seems overly optimistic.

As someone that started paying into SS a few years ago this sounds more like a cynical self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#30

Post by zrail »

Someone1234 wrote: post #19

I moved to the US from a country with socialised medicine. When you include premiums then taxes in both were roughly similar if not a little higher in the US (ignoring cost of living differences). But even that doesn't include the real sting on the tail of US medicine. You pay a fairly high health insurance premium, but if you actually need health services you then pay again through the nose even with insurance "disc…

$300 is a steal.
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