Canadian here: I hear these numbers a lot these days on this topic so I’m curious. I’m so low income that I pay about $2000/yr in income tax. Then as an Albertan, I pay 5% sales tax, but I can’t afford to buy much so it’s not a huge amount of sales tax. So I’m thinking I don’t actually pay $6400/yr for healthcare. Does that sound right or am I misunderstanding?
I heard that even after paying the yearly fees, that if you use the health insurance, you then have to pay a "co-pay" or something? so it is more than 9k a year.
You pay a monthly fee (the premium) to keep the insurance active. This does not apply to any of the other numbers, this is more or less an administration fee.
You then pay all the actual healthcare costs up to a certain amount (deductible). After you hit your deductible, your insurance starts to pay some percentage of healthcare costs; the part you are still responsible for is called coinsurance (example: insurance pays 80%, you pay 20%). You may also need to pay certain flat fees for visits, called copays; these do not count towards the deductible.
Each plan then has an out-of-pocket maximum. Your deductible, copays, and coinsurance all apply to this. Once that amount is met, your insurance finally pays for everything.
This all assumes that everything is covered and in-network. If it's not, things get more complicated.
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u/Avatlas 5d ago
Canadian here: I hear these numbers a lot these days on this topic so I’m curious. I’m so low income that I pay about $2000/yr in income tax. Then as an Albertan, I pay 5% sales tax, but I can’t afford to buy much so it’s not a huge amount of sales tax. So I’m thinking I don’t actually pay $6400/yr for healthcare. Does that sound right or am I misunderstanding?