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The NDP government is returning $90 million to Alberta doctors for helping the province cool the growth of health costs last year.

The repayment is required under the terms of a deal with the Alberta Medical Association in which a portion of doctors’ compensation was held back until the province was sure overall spending on physicians stayed on budget.

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Had spending gone over budget, the province would have kept the money.

“We recognized that spending was going up and up, and that there needed to be a bend to the cost curve,” AMA president Dr. Neil Cooper said in a recent interview.

“The whole idea of putting some of our own money at risk in order to make those changes was something that was relatively new … and so physicians were willing to step up to the plate and were successful in doing so.”

The deal with the AMA was signed in late 2016 amid a period when spending to pay doctors was rising at an unsustainable eight per cent or nine per cent per year.