Candidates pitch party cures for health care

MSP fees, doctor shortages among issues debated at election forum in Lake Country

Medical Services Plan premiums and doctor shortages were among the issues Kelowna-Lake Country candidates tackled at the Lake Country Chamber of Commerce all-candidates meeting Thursday night.

“MSP is an unfair tax,” said Erik Olesen, NDP candidate. “It doesn’t make sense to me that we pay a fee where that money is not being reinvested into health care. We need to make sure we’re investing money into public health care.”

The B.C. NDP has promised to eliminate MSP premiums if it wins the May 9 provincial election, but Olesen did not say how it would make up for the lost revenue.

Liberal incumbent Norm Letnick agreed the MSP should be eliminated and said how his party would do it.

“With five consecutive balanced budgets, leading the economy of this country, we were able to secure a $2-billion surplus this year, half of which we’re moving right away to MSP elimination,” he said.

The Liberals have promised to reduce MSP premiums by 50 per cent on Jan. 1, 2018.

“As the economy continues to expand, (we will) roll out the complete elimination of MSP without putting it into the income tax system.”

Green candidate Alison Shaw was the only one of the group to oppose eliminating MSP.

“We are talking about rolling the MSP into a progressive income tax system so those who have the capacity to pay will pay more than those who don’t,” she said. “We need funds to fund a deteriorated health-care system. We believe the MSP funds should be used for that.”

The Greens are proposing to use the MSP funds to create two new ministries: mental health and addiction, and health promotion.

Letnick praised the Liberals’ efforts in increasing the number of doctors in the province from 134 residency positions in 2003 to 246 positions in 2016, with plans to increase to 400 positions by 2025.

He also praised the Liberals’ recent nurse practitioner program, which places six nurses into private doctors’ offices across the Interior Health region, intended to free up doctors to take on more patients.

Shaw said the Greens would transfer billing responsibilities from general practitioners to administrators to free up time to be with patients.

“We are also interested in expanding supports for interprofessional and integrated primary care, such as physiotherapists, nurse practitioners, midwives (and) dieticians, getting people access to these services to take the weight off primary care and free up the wait times that we’ve all experienced in clinics,” she said.