BIU President Calls For Insurance Changes
BIU President, Chris Furbert, speaking today [Apr 28] on the “Sherri J” radio talk show on FM89.1 has called for local health insurance providers to lower their just announced planned rate increases that are to take effect from May 1st 2010.
Mr Furbert says that the local insurance providers have increased their monthly premiums by anything between 9% and 20%, and that this increase was “astronomical”. He also said that from the “Unions point of view, it was unacceptable”.
He is calling for a general membership meeting at Heritage Hall on Dundonald Street at 5:30pm on Thursday 29th April. This meeting is to hear from his union membership as well as from the general public. The meeting is both to listen and hear about concerns and to discuss what can be done next. Flyers were being handed out for the meeting at lunchtime today in Hamilton.
Mr Furbert expressed unhappiness with the Government’s 24% increase in Government’s own H.I.P. program and the 13% increase in the government mandated minimum health insurance package.
Mr Furbert was unhappy that what he called the 1% increase in Payroll tax seemed to have generated such huge knock-on price increases, which he considered to be unfair and unreasonable.
As a matter of record, these are the known and stated price and tax increases that apply to all the situations that the BIU President spoke of:
- Payroll Tax, employee’s share – from 4.75% to 5.75% – percentage increase is 21.05%
- Payroll tax, employer’s share – from 9.25% to 10.25% – percentage increase is 10.81%
- Government H.I.P. Premium – from $241.15 to $298.93 – percentage increase is 23.96%
- Minimum Health Package – from $104.22 to $118.07 – percentage increase is 13.29%
- Private health insurance providers – percentage increases said, by Mr Furbert, to be between 9% and 20%.
