special report
8 Obiter Dicta
Physician Services Cuts in Ontario
Just Politics or Path to Privatization?
I
luis chacin › contributor
f you have followed the debate
about Ontario doctors for the past few
months, you might think it is all about
their income. As recently as last week,
Minister Dr. Eric Hoskins reassured the
Legislative Assembly that doctors’ service
fees have gone up sixty percent since the
Liberals took office a decade ago and
that Ontario physicians are amongst the
best paid in the country, able to absorb
a five percent cut without any negative
effects on healthcare delivery. He has also
stated that the government is looking to
honour its commitments to increase the
wages of other healthcare professionals
and to increase funding to home care
and mental health services. I can only
suppose additional funding required by
Bill 95 (Improving Mental Health and
Addictions Services in Ontario Act) may
result in more challenges in the coming
years.
The Health Minister has also said the cuts to
physicians’ services introduced this year are a direct
result of the annual cuts to the province from the
federal Conservative government, claiming them to be
in the neighbourhood of eight hundred million dollars
a year for the next ten years. In spite of accusations that
fifty-four million dollars of federal health transfers
were directed to non-health programs earlier this
year, the Premier has said that the healthcare budget
is increasing, with doctors’ fees set to go up by 1.25
percent next year. Allegedly, then, the cuts suffered
by physicians today are being used to fund other
parts of the healthcare system by taking services out
of hospitals and into regional administrators (Local
Health Integration Networks (LHINs) and Community
Care Access Centres (CCACs)).
But these cuts or changes, depending on whose
side you are on,
are not new.
Back in 2012, the
Ontario Medical
Association
accepted a cut of
four percent that
saved t