I Vote No.

After a bitter two-year impasse, the OMA and the Ministry of Health suddenly kissed and made up over a tentative agreement Monday. The closed-door negotiations took everyone by surprise — from those in the higher echelons of the OMA to thousands of front-line physicians.

Given this total lack of transparency and due process, hundreds of physicians now question the motives behind OMA’s endorsement of a contract that is clearly bad for patient care and bad for physicians.

This contract does little to improve current state of affairs.

Hundreds of community physician clinics teeter on the brink of closure. Wait-lists spiral out of control. Specialists now reject new referrals because their wait-lists already stretch two to four years and one million Ontarians are without a family doctor.

This new contract ignores all that.

Instead, it will allow the government to underfund health care for four more years. The government’s own Financial Accountability Office calculated that need for physician services rises by an average 3.1% per year to maintain the bare minimum; many years, it requires an investment of 5.2% to maintain the status quo. Some years, it even increases by as much as 7%.

The Liberals want to arbitrarily cap that growth at 2.5%. Their math makes no sense. It doesn’t match reality. And it doesn’t match what patients need.

For those thinking that this contract will offer income stability, read the fine print. Any amount over this threshold of 2.5% will be clawed back. Given that physicians do not control when illness strikes and patients require medical attention, how exactly does the government expect doctors to enforce their cap? Should doctors turn patients away? Should they close their offices when they reach the hard cap of 2.5%?

This is neither a raise nor a wage freeze. This is a cut, one that the government wants physicians to endorse for the next four years. These cuts will lead to more clinic closures. Fewer doctors will be left to serve the growing lines of patients in need.

What happens when the government cuts health-care programs year after year? The stem-cell transplant fiasco is a stark example.

An eight-year period of under-funding the transplant program led to ballooning wait-lists where patients died waiting for treatment for a curable cancer. What will another four years of under-funding physician services do?

The loopholes in this contract gape large, allowing a convenient backdoor escape for the government to shirk its responsibility. After months of demanding that the government properly fund health care, it would be hypocrisy to sign this contract.

As a doctor and patient advocate, how can I in good conscience vote yes to a contract like this?

I am outraged that the OMA president and board are endorsing this contract. They are not stupid; they know it will under-fund and undermine patient care.

I am livid that a government that wastes hard-earned taxpayer money on all sorts of scandals and negligence is suddenly unable to fund the care my patients need.

Backroom dealings with the Liberals have produced an unacceptable contract.

I vote no.