{"id":847403,"date":"2026-08-05T20:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T20:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/847403\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T20:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T20:56:09","slug":"exclusive-28-quebec-medical-specialists-quit-ramq-this-year-to-go-fully-private","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/847403\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: 28 Quebec medical specialists quit RAMQ this year to go fully private"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than two dozen medical specialists \u2014 including five anesthesiologists and four orthopedic surgeons \u2014 had opted out of medicare by mid-July and have gone fully private despite a law last year<\/a> aimed at stemming the exodus of doctors from the public sector to the for-profit sector, The Gazette can reveal.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the total number of doctors in Quebec who have opted out stood at 821 as of July 14, down by just 1.5 per cent from the corresponding period last year, according to a review of the data by the R\u00e9gie de l\u2019assurance maladie du Qu\u00e9bec. By comparison, fewer than 20 doctors have pulled out of medicare in all of the rest of Canada.<\/p>\n

Facing a public outcry over the exodus of doctors to the private sector, the Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec government adopted Bill 83 on April 24 last year, compelling all newly graduated physicians (whose education and training are subsidized by taxpayers) to practise in the public system for the first five years of their careers. The law also gave Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec the discretionary power to disallow doctors from opting out in regions where access to certain medical services is threatened.<\/p>\n

A Gazette analysis of the latest RAMQ data has found that no general practitioners opted out of medicare from Jan. 1 to July 14, suggesting that all newly graduated doctors refrained from going fully private. However, Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec did permit 28 medical specialists to opt out, giving them the ability to bill patients directly up to tens of thousands of dollars for a wide range of medical services that would otherwise be covered under medicare.<\/p>\n

If Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec allows those transfers to the private sector, it means they don’t consider the situation to be problematic in those specialties, which is complete nonsense.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDr. Xavier Gauvreau
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPresident of M\u00e9decins qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois pour le r\u00e9gime public <\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that the government and Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec are not willing to close the loophole that allows the doctors to (fully) enter private practice,\u201d said Dr. Xavier Gauvreau, president of the pro-medicare group M\u00e9decins qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois pour le r\u00e9gime public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe law clearly states that if there is a need in a particular region for a particular specialty, then you cannot allow this opting out to occur. But we\u2019ve seen this trend since last year that they\u2019re allowing the specialists to opt out. The vast majority of the requests from the specialists were accepted, yet almost all the requests from general practitioners were rejected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec allows those transfers to the private sector,\u201d Gauvreau added, \u201cit means they don\u2019t consider the situation to be problematic in those specialties, which is complete nonsense when we take a look at the state of the health-care system right now. People don\u2019t have access to health care, but they\u2019re still allowing doctors to opt out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The opted-out specialists also include three dermatologists, three plastic surgeons, two urologists, two obstetrician-gynecologists, two ear-nose-and-throat specialists, two ophthalmologists, one general surgeon, one endocrinologist, one radiologist, one pneumologist and one specialist in rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

In total, 271 specialists have opted out to date, compared with 273 last year. Meanwhile, a cumulative total of 550 GPs have withdrawn from medicare, down from 561 last July.<\/p>\n

Wait lists surge for orthopedic surgery<\/p>\n

Although Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec has boasted of a dramatic drop in the number of patients waiting more than a year for elective or non-urgent surgery, wait times remain a major problem for cancer<\/a> and cardiac operations, with some heart patients dying<\/a> before they receive a call to go to the hospital. And even among elective surgeries, access still poses a problem.<\/p>\n

For example, wait lists for hip and knee replacements<\/a> have doubled since 2020. A record 28,530 Quebecers were on wait lists for orthopedic surgery in July, including nearly 1,000 who had been waiting more than a year. The number of Quebecers in need of a consultation with an orthopedic surgeon in the public system rose to 62,871 from 59,974 last year, with more than 45,000 waiting in pain beyond medically acceptable delays.<\/p>\n

Yet despite such access obstacles, Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec let four orthopedic surgeons leave the public system, with the total number of such opt-outs at 35. Today, nearly one out of 10 orthopedic surgeons practises in the private sector in Quebec.<\/p>\n

Catherine Brousseau, a spokesperson for Sant\u00e9 Qu\u00e9bec, cautioned against reading too much into the RAMQ data.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data in the RAMQ report requires context before any conclusions can be drawn,\u201d she said in a statement on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany specialist physicians become non-participants (in RAMQ) for short periods before rejoining the public plan, while others leave the network to retire. The published data represents a snapshot at a given date and can vary from day to day. Therefore, caution is advised before interpreting year-to-year variations as a long-term trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a clear case of the vampirization of the system.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDr. Xavier Gauvreau
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPresident of M\u00e9decins qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois pour le r\u00e9gime public<\/p>\n

Still, the long-term trend over the past quarter-century has shown a steady rise in the number of specialists working exclusively in the private sector.<\/p>\n

Gauvreau, a medical resident in psychiatry, likened those doctors who have opted out to vampires sucking the public system dry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a clear case of the vampirization of the system,\u201d he said. \u201cThe surgeons who opt out of the public system take with them all their staff, including the anesthesiologists, inhalation therapists and nurses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only ones who profit from the system that the CAQ put in place are the private clinics,\u201d he added. \u201cThe patients don\u2019t benefit from it. The caregivers don\u2019t benefit from it. And the system gets worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Dr. Pascal-Andr\u00e9 Vendittoli<\/a>, an orthopedic specialist and president of the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration des m\u00e9decins de pratique priv\u00e9e du Qu\u00e9bec, has countered that cash-strapped hospitals are not giving surgeons enough OR time, and that\u2019s why they have no choice but to go private.<\/p>\n

aderfel@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n

x.com\/Aaron_Derfel<\/a><\/p>\n

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