Did you know that you can get your meds much cheaper at..... ( Archived) (18)

Wowwww... Here you'd be lucky to get one office visit for $54. I've got some health issues and had to go to the ER a few times in the last couple of months. The cost? Around $6,000 total.

Here in the Yukon I pay 0 for healthcare, nor did I in Saskatchewan; except for elective surgeries, eye exams (75.00) Both provinces have drug subsidization programs for lower income/chronic illness. In Sask. seniors never pay more than 15.00 a prescription and they have deductibles for the year and if you go over, you are covered for prescription costs.
All stores here, Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart or Superstore pretty well charge the same...it is their dispensing fees that very.
And...in Saskatchewan, a chiropractor visit is only 10.00. Up here it is 40.00
For the first 3 months of relocating, we are covered by our province of origin and then transfer to new province/territory. When we travel within Canada, we are covered by our home insurance - the provinces have agreements of such and as there are several border cities (Lloydminster's hospital is on the Sask side of the border but used by the Albertans as well. At one time, I lived in Sask. but doctored in Manitoba...

Bless that doctor Sophie.
I ask my doctor for samples too.
The high cost is not alway the drug companies but also the pharmasist.
All very greedy!

OMG 6.000?
It is free in Canada.
My late husband was in the emergency so much we were known very well.
If we had to pay we would have been very broke

In UK all health service is fre bar medication. If rich then you pay a minimal amount if poor pay nothing.

So are people paying in Canada and the UK high taxes to pay for it all, like they have to do in the U.S. if they get health care there?

We've all heard that Americans pay less taxes than Canadians. But in fact, for more than half of Canadians, the grass is still greener here at home.

In Canada, governments tax upper middle-income earners and the rich much more stiffly, and go easier on those with lower incomes. The poor, and those in the lower middle-income ranges, end up with more in their pockets in this country than they do in the States.

For simplicity's sake, the cutoff point comes at about the $60,000 level, slightly above the average Canadian family income.

This isn't what the tax-cutting advocates emphasize - people like Reform leader Preston Manning, conservatively-minded media commentators, and the executives of Canada's largest corporations. Taxes, they chorus, are a big factor in the so-called "brain drain'' of talented Canadians and help account for the shift of corporate head offices to south of the border.

In very rough figures, the federal finance department calculates that Canadians pay an average 35 per cent of their income in taxes and Americans pay 30 per cent - 5 per cent less.

But before you rush off to the States, consider some of the lesser-known facts behind the broad 5-per-cent generalization.

Statistics Canada took a look at what Canadians and Americans have left in their pockets in a 1998 study by Michael Wolfson and Brian Murphy. The researchers compared the disposable income of Canadian and American families - what's theirs to spend after taxes and deductions.

"Families . . . living in the United States are not necessarily better off in terms of disposable income, than their Canadian counterparts,'' they concluded. "Indeed, roughly half of Canadian families had disposable incomes in 1995 that gave them higher purchasing power than otherwise comparable U.S. families.''

Not sure about canada but UK we pay 20%tax, this is considered OK by all to make sure the sick and needy have at least a basic right to health care and escape from extreme poverty.