w1sa:
Do you know what Australia's yearly cost is per taxpayer?
We are small compared to yourselves. We are a population of 20M. Our economy is a mere 1.3 Trillion $ annually.
But we probably share the same/similar health expectations.
For Our Current Year the National Gov's budget includes the following
Total federal taxpayer expenditure is..............338 B$...incl.deficit spending stimuli going thru the global fin turndown
Total federal tax revenue is.........................291 B$
of that
Total 'Individual taxpayer' income tax..............123 B$
Total projected federal Health expense is........ 51 B$...includ gov admin, national health programs and aged care accom subs etc.
of that
Total proj taxpayer funded Medical/Pharma..........23 B$
Our average full-time wage(incl all wage earnings i.e take home pay before tax) is about........ $65K
Income tax on that pay (incl Medicare levy) is about.........................................................$15K
Lower incomes pay a lesser % as tax, Higher incomes pay more e.g. 15K pays about 10%($1500), 150K pays about 50K tax. (say 30-35%)
So it depends on the way you look at it as to the average cost per taxpayer. I don't know off hand the number of individual income earners paying tax. If I assume 7.5m taxpayers (s/b close), then they are each required to pay an average $6k tax to pay for the total federal governemt Health services budget.
If you focus on the actual Medical/Pharmaceutical rebate payouts alone, the average is about 3K per taxpayer p/y
