To the editor: Eliminate MSP Premiums
Medical service premiums have increased over 90 per cent since 2001 and this is hurting modest income households.
If your adjusted net income is one dollar over the $30,000 MSP subsidy level, you pay the same premium as a millionaire. For a family of three, an adjusted net income of $33,000 is barely adequate, but MSP takes five per cent ($1,662) in premiums.
A family of three earning $330,000 pays the same premium amount of $1,662, but this amounts to only 0.5 per cent of their income.
Thirty-seven per cent of all B.C. seniors received some level of premium assistance in 2012 (according to Terry Lake’s Jan. 7 letter to the editor), an indication that regular premiums are becoming increasingly unaffordable.
It should not be necessary for so many residents to be subjected to MPS premium-assistance bureaucracy in their senior years. There are more progressive ways to supplement health care funding. If a medical tax were to be included on income tax based on taxpayers’ ability to pay, medical service premiums could be eliminated, there would be no need for premium assistance and administration costs would be substantially reduced.
Frieda Nietzel,
Port Coquitlam
