Maximus, the U.S. company in charge of BC’s Medical Service Plan (MSP) and PharmaCare, is being fined for the second time this year after failing to uphold a requirement of their contract with the BC government. The company must maintain a three minute waiting time for people calling in to the automated services. Currently, the waiting time is five times that much, at fifteen minutes per call...
Because employees of the two programs both work with the phone lines and conduct paper work, mailed applications are slowing down as well. According to the Times, in June, 62 per cent of new applications for MSP were processed within 40 days. In 2004, that number was 64 per cent. Both are far behind the Maximus target, which was 99 per cent within 20 days.
As an added bonus, Maximus is also under investigation in Washington, D.C. and has "had problems" in six states...yet is in the running for another of Gordo's privatization programs, this time for BC Nurseline.
The lesson to take from this is of course that privatization itself doesn't do anything to lessen the burdens on the health system - that can only be accomplished through new (and properly targeted) resources, regardless of their source. Meanwhile, the transaction costs of privatizing only distract attention from the real problems. BC is caught in that trap now; other provinces should learn from Campbell's mistakes.
(Edit: eliminated superfluous and unnecessary redundancy.)
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