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Health Minister Gaétan Barrette plans to change the law to allow private medical clinics to bill patients certain “accessory” fees that are now illegal while setting limits on other charges, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

“We will soon table an amendment to Bill 20 that will set limits to what can be billed to a patient and what can’t,” Joanne Beauvais, Barrette’s press attaché, said in an email response to a query about the controversial accessory fees.

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“This amendment will be studied when the (National Assembly) commission sits again in August.”

Barrette, she continued, “has always been” open to the concerns of some physicians in private practice who have argued that the current fee structure does not reflect today’s medical reality.

“What he was opposed to was the exaggeration in fees — $180 for eye drops?”

Beauvais would not say exactly what fees will be permitted under the new amendment or what will remain illegal. But Barrette’s openness to allowing certain fees follows pressure by the Quebec College of Physicians to modernize the list of accessory charges.