85% is not a tax, it's robbery!

While recently traveling to the US for a day to drop a friend off at the airport, we went to do some shopping as well. The shopping was good and we bought a reasonable amount between the two of us. On a whim we picked up a cheap case of beer and two cheap bottles of wine. While at the border we made the mistake of telling the border guard the truth. Unfortunately there is absolutely no tax exemption for alcohol or tobacco for visits less than 48 hours, which I didn't know. So we went into pay for the taxes on the alcohol, which I figured would be a reasonable amount, like 20% at the most. Turns out the tax on alcohol is 85%!!! When you add the currency conversion the wine and beer would have doubled in price. Ironically the beer was still cheaper than it would have been in Canada. We decided the wine was not worth it and left it behind.

I was in shock at the ridiculous amount of tax the government charged to bring back what I thought was a reasonable amount of goods from the US. I think this is a good example of the difference between the two countries in terms of health care as well. The US revolves around the principles of capitalism and competition to lower prices and produce the best product. This is why the US has the most innovative health care, with the best technology and the latest treatments available. This is why many Canadians go down to the US for treatments. The US health care system is obviously not perfect and would probably work better if it was even more capitalist and encouraged more competition between insurance providers to get better prices. Canada on the other hand is government regulated with all prices set kind of like the alcohol in provinces like BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario to name a few. In the government's attempt to regulate alcohol the price shoots up with taxes and it is almost impossible to compete with the taxes and regulations. The selection also suffers and we are left with fewer choices of beer, wine and spirits than the US. This is paralleled in health care with artificial prices (in this case less than the US but paid for by more taxes from us) and lack of selection (wait lists and limited options in terms of treatments).

Now the comparison isn't perfect but it certainly got me thinking at the differences between how Canada and the US are run, especially in health care. Normally I am very supportive of Canadian health care, but this incident got me thinking. There must be a better way to do things than to have ridiculous "taxes" and complete government regulation. Maybe there is a happy medium between the two systems. I am sure I will update this post once I have a better idea of the ins and outs of the health care system.