smk_ujs said:
Hey Leon,
Just a quick question! what if some one lands in Ontario and has made the permanent move there. He applies for OHIP, and waits for 3 months and gets the health card. Then, uses the health card and in the fourth month finds a job in another province. What happens in that case?
I mean this is fairly common that when immigrants move to ON, they are not really sure where they will be able to find a job. What happens if in the fourth month after using your healthcard for doc visits or emergencies, you now have to move because you found a job in another province? What happens in that case?
One of the conditions of health care is notifying them if you move. If you move without having spent 5/6 months in Ontario, OHIP could retroactively cancel your OHIP based on not meeting the eligibility requirements and back charge you for what they paid for you.
I don't know if this happens in many cases but there was a woman on this forum a couple of years ago who said that this very thing happened to her in BC. She had landed in BC, applied for MSP and gotten her health card after the waiting period. She gave birth to a baby shortly after that and ended up leaving Canada after a total of 5.5 months. She continued paying her BC health care premiums because she was fully intending to return but as MSP realized that she was paying from outside Canada, they waited for her to be in breach of her eligibility requirements which back then was 6/12 months or 6 months in a calendar year or whatever and when it was obvious she could no longer meet them, they retroactively cancelled her health care and notified her that because she breached the eligibility, it was like if she'd never had MSP in the first place. They therefore sent her a bill for $43,000 for the birth of the baby although they subtracted from the bill the health care premiums she had already paid. She was in shock. She asked them how can it cost $43,000 to have a baby because it was a normal birth, nothing out of the ordinary and they said that the hospitals bill MSP differently (more) than self-payers and they were simply passing on to her the bills that MSP had paid on her behalf. I told her to try to talk to the BC Ombudsman and ask if there was anything they could do. I don't know if she did because she did not stick around to tell us.
In any case, be advised that when you apply for health care, you are making a contract of sorts and it's up to you to read the conditions of this contract and abide by the rules. It's all on the application form so you can not say later that you did not know. You can admit that you signed without reading but that would be your fault and not theirs.
