An average Canadian family of two adults and two children will pay about $11 400 in taxes for health care in­surance in 2012, according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.

The report, entitled “The Price of Public Health Care Insurance: 2012 Edition,” calculates the amount of taxes an average family pays to all levels of government in a year and the percentage of the total tax bill that goes toward public health care insurance.

The report notes that since 2002 the cost of health care insurance for the average Canadian family has in­creased by 59.8% before inflation, and that the cost grew 1.6 times faster than the average income over the decade. By way of comparison, the cost of public health care increased more than twice as fast as the cost of shelter, roughly four times as fast as the cost of food, and more than five times as fast as the cost of clothing. 

Read the full report at www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=18858 [8].