This question is for Canada, the UK?

well first of all I love that our health care system is FREE but in our hospitals you wait A LONG to be seen by a doctor and everytime we go to the family doctor it is free I was actually just talking to my mom and her friend about how happy I am that I live here we get a full year paid of maternity leave and if we decided not to come back we don't have to and we do not owe any money back to anybody ... I just answered someones question who was asking about mat. leave and some people from the United States answered and they were saying you get approx. 6 weeks off of work paid but if you decided you do not want to return to work then you have to pay back your employer I just couldn't believe that now as for how much taxes we pay on pretty much everything we buy other then children's clothes we pay 14% tax on everything (except children's clothes then we only pay 6%) and when we get paid they take a fair amount off of your paycheck I can't say exactly how much but here is an example i just found one of my fiance's pay stub and he gets paid everyweek about $400 well this paystub says he made $591.65 which they call "gross pay" and the deductions were $131.39 so he took home $460.26 which they call "net pay" then they have his year-to-date income on the bottom which says Gross pay = $16,978.34 his deductions were $3,560.02 so his take home "net pay " so far for the year was $13,418.32 now that was a while ago and he hadn't been working there a year yet but that is just to give you a bit of an idea of how much tax we pay now at tax time he will get back some money but VERY little he will be lucky if he gets $200 back... if you have kids though you get more back and everybody that works gets G.S.T cheques 4 times a year he gets about $80 everytime and our taxes pay for our healthcare and our schools and military and for people on welfare or maternity leave and sick leave stuff like that... our hospitals may have an extremely long wait but it is free so if you don't have moey you can still see a doctor you don't have to go bankrupt and if you are really sick like asthma you get seen pretty much right away and kids get seen fairly quickly.

I live in Ontario and like someone else said sometimes they have too many people in the hospitals and people have to be in beds out in the hall because there isn't any rooms I haven't heard of not haveing free ambulances and I haven't heard of people dying in the waiting rooms our health care system is FAR from perfect but I am still happy and glad I live here in Ontario where I can take my son to the doctor and gets his shots FREE where I delivered him for FREE I think we would be bankrupt if we lived in the U.S I have severe asthma so all the times I end up in the hospital woulda cost a ton of money. the united states health care system is perfect if you have a lot of money but if you are just "middle class" or even worse "lower class" your totally screwed!

In Canada, tax freedom day (the day when we stop paying the government and start paying ourselves) is in late June on average. That's about half the year.

Where all that tax money goes and how much goes to health is unknown to me.

What I do know is that there are some major health issues in my province of Alberta.

There are many incidents where there are no free ambulances because they are all busy with patients.

There are many "code burgundy"s - where there are no more free hospital beds.

There are more than a few who have died waiting in the emergency waiting room.

There are many who go to the US (including those Liberal and NDP politicians in Canada spearheading the "say-no-to- US-style- private-healthcare" campaign) to get quick surgery rather than wait in line for life-saving surgery for over a year in Canada.

I am not sure on the actual tax about, but I can tell you that the system here in Ontario is not doing very well. There's a shortage of doctors, hospitals in cities have a 4-7 hour waiting time in the ER..It's not good at all.

It's not a specific tax. There's no one tax that solely pays for the NHS.

Spending on the NHS in 2007/8 is set to be about £92bn (~$180bn).

It's horribly expensive, but it's worth it. The trust in my country is always underfunded and runs off tourist workers, and it takes forever to see anyone, but there are private hospitals just the same and I can't afford them. The trick is in money mismanagement, which we've kind of clamped down in the UK - we've tightened the budget and built more hospitals.

i became born in England and nevertheless stay right here to on the present time. Love the united kingdom. have been to united states traveling family contributors and punctiliously enjoyed myself. next, i opt to pass to Canada. Heard good issues approximately it :D