My Tyee column: Why the new health tax makes sense

Winners are always champions of the status quo. 

Like Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson. He was asked whether it was fair that employers had paid MSP premiums for 40 per cent of workers, while the rest had to pay the premiums out of their own pockets.

“Fairness is always a matter to be sorted out in the marketplace,” he said. “That’s what employers have to do is compete for good workers and pay them appropriately.”

So if you and your spouse are both working full-time at $15 an hour — about $29,000 each — it’s fair that you had to pay MSP premiums. And that the Liberals doubled them.

Just as Wilkinson, paid almost $159,000, thinks it’s fair that taxpayers take care of his MSP premiums as part of a lavish benefits/pension package.

It’s the market, you know.

Which is rubbish. MLAs’ pay and benefits weren’t set by the market. The government ordered a rigged review https://willcocks.blogspot.ca/2007/05/outrageous-mla-pay-plan-and-class-in-bc.html which delivered big raises and pensions the rest of us could only dream about. The review decided MLAs needed up to $19,000 a year for a second home in Victoria, while our elected representatives decided people on disability assistance should be able to find a place to live in Victoria for $4,500 a year. 

Free markets bring great benefits. But the free market mantra has become a justification for the powerful to protect their own interests at the expense of other citizens.

Which leads to the new government’s health care tax, replacing MSP premiums.

Broadly, the tax ends MSP payments for individuals and shifts the cost to employers. About 40 per cent of employees, generally unionized or management, often in the public sector, have had their MSP premiums paid by the employer in the past. Most of us paid $900 a year or more. (People with net household incomes under $42,000 could apply for an exemption.)

No one could argue that MSP premiums were sound public policy. They were a tax, and people earning $50,000 paid the same as people earning $500,000. 

The Liberals, recklessly https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/02/27/BC-Liberals-Time-Bomb-Budget/, promised to cut MSP premiums in half in 2017 without saying how they would cut services or raise other taxes to make up the lost revenue.

The New Democrats upped the ante by promising to eliminate MSP premiums — also without saying how they would make up the lost revenue. 

And please, read the rest of the column here at The Tyee. It's pretty good.