Recent news stories about Health Minister, Dave Hancock's proposal to eliminate Alberta's $44 per person, per month health care premium tax have been both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because it has provided an opportunity for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), to reiterate our opposition to the regressive health care premium tax. But a curse because it has resurfaced many myths that surround the tax.

The two biggest myths A) the revenue collected from the health care premium tax goes directly into the health care budget, and B) if the tax is eliminated, the millions it generates will have to be cut out of the health care budget.

The fact is the entire $906 million the Alberta government is projected to collect this year from the health care premium tax goes into the government's General Revenue Fund. Not one penny goes directly into the health care budget.

Furthermore, if (and hopefully when) the premium tax is eliminated, not one red cent will be taken out of the health care budget. Not one.

Regardless of the facts, far too many politicians continue to spread falsehoods about the health care premium tax to justify this unnecessary plundering of Albertans' wallets.

Former premier Ralph Klein recently weighed-in against eliminating the tax (a tax he not only refused to scrap during his tenure, but in fact jacked-up by 29 per cent in 2002) by claiming: "health care costs are going up and up and up. To cut $1 billion dollars out would be disastrous."

Calgary MLA Wayne Cao, also recently furthered the myth by stating: "we have to collect from somewhere, or else you have to reduce the health care budget by that amount - which is scary."

Two former provincial treasurers, Shirley McClellan and Jim Dinning, also enjoyed using the myth as a defence against anyone who suggested eliminating the tax.

During the 2005 Budget debates, then-finance minister McClellan responded to a question about health care premiums: "Health premiums are around $1 billion, just under, in revenue. Should we have gotten rid of premiums and not given Health that money "

In response to the CTF's question about eliminating the premium tax during the recent PC leadership race, Dinning wrote: "I am not prepared to eliminate health care premiums - Health care premiums currently bring in around $900 million that goes to pay for health care."

For these current and former politicians to suggest that health care premiums actually fund health care and eliminating them would mean a cut to the health care budget is at best disingenuous, and at worst an out-and-out lie.

In 2004, when the Alberta government eliminated health care premiums for seniors, it represented a loss of revenue for the government of $22 million dollars in the 2004-05 fiscal year. According to Klein, Cao and others who claim a link between the health care premium and health spending - Alberta's health care budget must have also been cut by $22 million, right

Wrong.

In fact, heath spending increased by $1.4 billion during the same time period.

It's great Hancock and others are raising the issue of eliminating the health care premium tax. An honest debate on the premium tax is long-over due. But it's awfully tough to have an honest debate on the issue, when one side's not being honest.