The bad deal that american's get for their taxes is really sad.
US is a much more competitive and diverse market in every respect (even with it's shortcomings).
My parents (and other immediate family), would move to the US if they could.
My partner and I lived in the US for 10 years, and decided to move back. We're very glad we did.
The US is much more competitive, I'll give you that, but it's not necessarily a good thing. I don't miss it. It's dog-eat-dog, every person for themselves.
I'm not sure how long you've lived in the US, but the first few years we were there were pretty peachy. But the problems just keep piling up.
I don't really have the patience to list everything, but the health care system _alone_ is reason enough to stick around in Canada. It's awesome. The US is a complete disaster. And I say this as someone who benefited from probably the best quality healthcare in the world during my time there.
The US is great if you want a high-paying career working for world-leading company. Typically you'd make enough so that things like healthcare are an annoyance, not a financial nightmare.
Canada is great if your career is not #1 and you want a government that will provide a comprehensive social safety net.
Different stroke for different folks I guess.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individ...
[2] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/income-taxes/person...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_British_Columbi...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...
The ACA is effectively an extremely large tax on the middle class.
And yes, if you get a significant amount of care, the out of pocket can be several thousand.
Anecdotally, my tech-industry employer (disclosed in my profile) offers only one health plan. Always $0 employee contributions for the employee and dependents and no more than $200/month for the employee's partner.
For in-network: $0 deductible, 0% coinsurance, copays are either $30 or $50 for office visits, $250 copay for ER, and standard $15/$40/$75 tiers for drugs. Out of pocket max is $3k for individual / $7.5k for family.
Given the $0 deductible and 0% coinsurance, it would take a very high number of office visits (at least 60 for individuals or 150 for families) to hit the out of pocket cap. For healthy families, it's fairly difficult to spend more than a few hundred dollars on health care (dental/vision plans are similarly generous).
An interesting example the legal documents provide is pregnancy. The stated cost is $12,800 but the expected out of pocket cost is $60.
Canada has payroll taxes too, so you'd need to add those in as well.
Sales tax is 12% (5% federal, 7% provincial) on most products; basic groceries and rent are the most significant exemptions. Federal payroll taxes are 10.2% (pension) + 3.8% (unemployment) on the first ~$55k. BC has a 1.95% payroll tax (nominally earmarked for health care) with a small-business exemption.
My youngest (2.5 year old) is at the ER with my wife right now getting an x-ray (insurance & the pediatric urgent-cares all referred us to ER, no one else would x-ray <3yr olds) -- I'd guess it'll cost us at least $2-3k, assuming they say it's "not broken". Substantially more if it "is broken". Yay USA.
Yes, I just arbitrarily picked $250k. No I ignored SSI+OAIS (US) because it phases out at $137,000.
CA: 35% (fed) + 9.3% (state) + 1.45% (Medicare) = 45.75%
BC: 33% (fed) + 20.5% (province) = 53.5%