In your April 15 editorial opposing single-payer health care, you noted that while “most Americans earn enough to pay all state, local and federal taxes by May 16 each year,” Canadians do not achieve that goal until the end of June because of Canada’s tax-supported single-payer health care system. You suggested that this “should frighten us all.”
Indeed, I find it terrifying whenever journalists try to use statistics.
Although you did not give your sources for the editorial, I assume that you used figures from the Tax Foundation, an organization notably better at generating publicity than at providing accurate information. (Independent experts have calculated that Tax Foundation figures overstate the average American’s taxes by 33 percent.)
Nevertheless, a closer look at those dates shows that, although the way that you use statistics is frightening, the numbers themselves are not.
According to the Tax Foundation’s Web site, the average American has to work 44 days per year to pay for health care. Because Canadian health care is included in Canadian taxation, those 44 days must be added to the American date before comparing the two systems.
Using your date of May 16 and adding 44 days, I calculate that Americans must work until early July to pay for taxes and health care that Canadians finished paying for a few days earlier. Yet all Canadians have health care coverage and over 40 million Americans have none.
That is scary.
Bob Tymoczko, Lewiston
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