Outstanding MSP Premium

[gman313]

Nice to know I am supplementing 300,000 lazy people in BC who won't pay their MSP. I'm not talking those on premium assistance I'm talking those who don't bother to pay.

The system is ridiculous but step up and pay your share.

[LongHaul]

IMHO this is a very unfair and stupid tax. Am calling it a tax instead of a premium as this is what it really is. MSP Premium makes one think it used solely to help cover Health Care Costs. However there isn't any guarantee all the money collected is applied against Health Care Costs. My understanding is it goes into General Revenue and can be used for anything.

It's unfair as the quotation from an article from the Province explains. Link is below. The petition mentioned is now past 60,000 signatures.

Based on the current system, households making less than $22,000 pay nothing, while a family of three or more making more than $30,000 pays $150 each month, up slightly from $144 in 2014.
But that $150 rate also applies to those who earn millions, which has led to calls for change in how MSP funding is collected.

http://www.theprovince.com/campaign+scrap+premiums+gathers+steam/11637291/story.html

It seems stupid and inefficient to have MSP as a separate tax that is administered separately from what is already in place to handle the Provincial Income Tax. The administration of MSP Billing was Outsourced to an American Company back in 2004. We are paying an ongoing cost for this service. This cost possibly could be eliminated if the MSP was collected via Income Tax like the other provinces.
This should nearly eliminate people not paying their MSP Tax. The MSP can then be scaled to income which with overall cost savings could result in more funds available for MSP.

As an aside there is a interesting report by the Auditor at that time which was very critical of the Outsourcing. Link follows.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/outsourcing-health-administration-not-bringing-expected-benefits-b-c-auditor-1.1177007

The downside if the MSP Tax is included with Income Tax is it will been seen as raising the BC Tax Rate. It's supposedly the lowest in Canada although if one believes that they could probably be sold a Flying Carpet.

Adding together the Provincial Tax, the MSP Tax, tax on Vehicle owners collected by transfers of surpluses from ICBC followed by rate increases, etc, etc tax experts estimate BC is somewhere around the middle compared to other provinces. The link below is from an article a few years back but it still applies.

http://blogs.theprovince.com/2012/08/23/jordan-bateman-martyn-brown-comes-clean-b-c-taxes-are-up/

Just my opinion...

[Veovis]

Considering an application by an employer to MSP through a fax machine can take up to 3 or more months to actually be processed (as with terminations) the 31 day figure becomes pointless other than to show that MSP has massive failures in it's overall operation.

Their web applications are brutal at best as well and if you add a lot of it up fixing the MSP system could save all the losses they are receiving at this point and then fix those loses anyways.

However to keep a max slowdown through most unionized sectors as "layoffs due to fixing a system" is evil the system stays broken

[davis123]

Nice to know I am supplementing 300,000 lazy people in BC who won't pay their MSP. I'm not talking those on premium assistance I'm talking those who don't bother to pay.

The system is ridiculous but step up and pay your share.

Lazy people? If they were lazy they would be eligible for premium assistance, I think you mean to say financially unable to pay their MSP...once you reach 30,000 a year you pay the full monthly amount, 150$, and that is for a family of three or more. Do you really think someone making 30,000 a year and supporting a family, and someone making 600,000 should be paying the same amount? That is ridiculous.

Do you know how much food 150$ will buy a family? Or how that money could be put towards hydro/gas etc. That 30,000 cap should be bumped up to 100,000, if we have to pay the ridiculous fee, at least make the wealthy families foot the majority of the cost so low earners can feed their family.

It's amazing that low earners would be better off most times just quitting their jobs and going on welfare so they receive the added benefits, I remember years ago our family was living off 6$ an hour, I needed major dental work done but had no benefits and couldn't afford the payments so the dental work didn't get done for years, but had a friend who was on welfare that got benefits up the wazoo, including free dental, meanwhile we were working our butts off working full-time and had to go without dental or any extras. That just isn't right or fair, a welfare recipient should be living minimally so they appreciate and understand and are pushed towards working full-time so they have money for the extras in life, not the other way around.

[flamingfingers]

Now a word from Christy Clark about MSP premiums:

“Here is the thing about the MSP system is it is antiquated, it is old, and the way people pay for it generally doesn’t make a whole tonne of sense so therefore it is really hard to try and make the sensible changes that we need to do.” – Christy Clark, Feb 11, 2016

Huh???

[mexi cali]

Lump it in with income tax and problem as solved as it can be. Also, make the government accountable for how it is spent. Any money, and I mean every penny, allotted for health care goes to healthcare.

They have a collection department that would make any financial company foam at the mouth in hopes of having them collect money. I was in between having to pay it myself and waiting for my companies application to get me set up for a specific time and I didn't make my last payment because it was supposed to have been paid by my company but there was a gap in the system and they were on me like white on rice. Rather than argue, I paid it and was reimbursed and when my coverage started, the start date was exactly what it should have been.

Savages!

[Rwede]

"It's buggered up so that makes it hard to fix." Is that what she's saying?

She's an idiot. Yet she's going to win in 2017. I hate being a voter in BC.

[whatwhat]

Nice to know I am supplementing 300,000 lazy people in BC who won't pay their MSP. I'm not talking those on premium assistance I'm talking those who don't bother to pay.

The system is ridiculous but step up and pay your share.

Well you aren't really supplementing the people who haven't paid as you are still paying the same amount.

I was 2 years behind on paying my MSP (when I turned 19 and wasn't covered by my parents anymore) I didn't even realize there was a MSP to pay. They did not contact me or send a letter for that long. I guess one of those things they forget to teach in school a long with how to do your taxes haha.

They also automatically charge you the premium price no matter how much your income is. You need to send in forms for them to re-adjust your MSP premium. I will link it if case anyone wants it. I wasn't aware of different premiums either until a friend found these forms on the college website.

http://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/health/forms/119fil.pdf

[Dizzy1]

once you reach 30,000 a year you pay the full monthly amount, 150$, and that is for a family of three or more. Do you really think someone making 30,000 a year and supporting a family, and someone making 600,000 should be paying the same amount? That is ridiculous.

What is ridiculous is expecting people who make more to have to pay more for the same services. People don't stay in school to achieve a better paying job in order to support those who don't. To me, thats no different then the average wage earner having to carry welfare cases.

Do you know how much food 150$ will buy a family?

Sadly, not much anymore.

It's amazing that low earners would be better off most times just quitting their jobs and going on welfare so they receive the added benefits,

And a lot of people do just that. Its not hard to walk into the walk-in clinic, get a required note for "medical" reasons and you've just instantly extended the length of your welfare.

[GordonH]

Medical Services in Canada needs to be overhauled, first thing that needs to be addressed is top heaviness. The savings from just that along should remove wait times.

Top heavy area is administration, if cuts were to happen that does not mean the remainder get pay raises either.

[Joe Public]

Medical Services in Canada needs to be overhauled, first thing that needs to be addressed is top heaviness. The savings from just that along should remove wait times.

Top heavy area is administration, if cuts were to happen that does not mean the remainder get pay raises either.

Sorry Gordon but that isn't going to happen.

When Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals first assumed power, they went to the US HMO's to discuss privatisation of the BC health services. The HMO's told Campbell that they couldn't privatise BC health care because it was too big for them. They then told Campbell that the BC Liberals needed to do two things in order to make BC health care privatisation possible.

1) They needed to break health care delivery down into smaller manageable units which did not report to a centralised management so that each individual unit could be privatised separately. The BC Liberals then created the individual health authorities each with a full management and administrative teams.

2) They needed to start charging every BC resident for health care so that they got used to the idea that everyone would have to pay.

Looks like the plan is working out very well, doesn't it? I wonder what "isn't on the radar" for the next election?

[GordonH]

Medical Services in Canada needs to be overhauled, first thing that needs to be addressed is top heaviness. The savings from just that along should remove wait times.

Top heavy area is administration, if cuts were to happen that does not mean the remainder get pay raises either.

Sorry Gordon but that isn't going to happen.

When Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals first assumed power, they went to the US HMO's to discuss privatisation of the BC health services. The HMO's told Campbell that they couldn't privatise BC health care because it was too big for them. They then told Campbell that the BC Liberals needed to do two things in order to make BC health care privatisation possible.

1) They needed to break health care delivery down into smaller manageable units which did not report to a centralised management so that each individual unit could be privatised separately. The BC Liberals then created the individual health authorities each with a full management and administrative teams.

2) They needed to start charging every BC resident for health care so that they got used to the idea that everyone would have to pay.

Looks like the plan is working out very well, doesn't it? I wonder what "isn't on the radar" for the next election?

Unfortunately there is this Federal matter which stops all attempts to Privatize:
Canadian Health Act

[Lady tehMa]

Would combining the premium into our taxes, and then adding more levels to make it less onerous on the lower (paying) brackets not make more sense than having it as a separate payment?

[Dizzy1]

Would combining the premium into our taxes, and then adding more levels to make it less onerous on the lower (paying) brackets not make more sense than having it as a separate payment?

Shhhh! That's a very bad word in any level of BC Government ;)

[Veovis]

Would combining the premium into our taxes, and then adding more levels to make it less onerous on the lower (paying) brackets not make more sense than having it as a separate payment?

It could be, however many would rather it simply be built into a system that says "make the rich pay" which is such a subjective term these days that really only means "make someone other than myself pay".

There is perhaps a way it could be built into the tax system (not just "raise taxes!!!"), but it would be complicated and people would complain about it still being "unfair" somehow, like all tax issues much of the complaining comes from not knowing how taxes really work or simply ignoring a lot of what you can do to help your personal taxes.

The MSP system is poor, but little has to do with just "admin" and a lot do do with how they actually process things, which is simply poorly done. As others have noted, they get a letter of collection a year or more after the premiums started accruing and there really is no reason for that other than an inefficient system.

You can't simply "get rif of MSP" nor "tax the rich" to make it work, but the system does need some significant overhauls.