The following is a guest post by CTF supporter Howard Brandt.

I'm feeling undone--by yet further, consecutive-year rate hikes from ICBC and the BC Ministry of Health.

What does it take to get British Columbians off their lethargic backsides to combat, en masse, their government's unbridled greed and irresponsible spending habits? Or are people here just simply so content, so wealthy that these yearly increases in MSP and auto insurance premiums make no difference to them? 

I've been a self-employed, private-sector individual since roughly the mid-1980s and my time in Tokyo. I work hard for my money and must be circumspect with how I spend what I earn. So I grudgingly give up my income to people I see only as publicly paid parasites for whom the money equation consists merely of the easiest parts: budgeting and spending.

When I see people, particularly our politicians, spend our tax dollars in profligate fashion, I am little inclined to yield up more dollars that I know they will only squander. Because I know well the most difficult, initial part of the money equation: working for money by constantly and consistently advertising and providing quality goods or services that people need and want. 

I railed against the MSP hike for 2014 with a strongly worded letter to the Ministry of Health in December 2013 after finding no satisfactory explanation of the increase on the ministry website, despite assurances that I would indeed find explanations there on my paper bill and on the website's home page. Have you ever noted how absurd the pronouncement of the hike is on that site? 

"Government announced a rate increase to MSP premiums effective January 1, 2015. If you would like more information, see www.health.gov.bc.ca/msp/infoben/premium.html."

That's it. A decree from on high. Click the link in the hopes of the promised information, and you get more of the same. You are simply told that the rates have gone up, this is what they are, pay them. Not even a "sorry suckers."

To my surprise, I did get a response from a ministry communications person. To no surprise, it was the usual politicized nonsense about how the government has greatly increased spending to provide the best healthcare service to British Columbians, blah, blah, blather.

No attempt was made to address my questions about how my money was being spent or, more to the point, whether it was being spent well. I pointed out in my letter that setting up fiefdoms in the way of Fraser Health and the like was largely to blame for the degradation of services and the rise in costs provincewide. I also pointed out that paying a redundancy of administrators excessive salaries did nothing to bolster medical care but, rather, subtracted from the monies that would be better expended on frontline medical personnel and services.

I have a similar but even more harshly worded missive in mind for the ministry this December 2014 given the third consecutive year of hikes in MSP premiums. I want to let them know that I'll continue paying only last year's premium, which already was too much, until such time as they learn to conduct themselves like adults and to spend responsibly. 

Imagine the effect in the Fraser Valley if we infused administrators' wages into the actual provision of quality care at our hospitals.