The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan will allow self-employed doctors to join starting in January, giving incorporated physicians and their staff a new option to earn defined-benefit retirement income from one of the province's largest pension funds. The Globe's James Bradshaw writes that HOOPP's new eligibility rules will give tens of thousands of physicians a choice to join the plan, after years of advocacy from groups that represent doctors. Until now, thousands of individual doctors who incorporated their own practice were not able to join HOOPP because they are effectively the employer as well as an employee of the practice, which blurred a key distinction in the way contributions are made. Many of Ontario's doctors have no formal pension plan and are saving for retirement on their own, even though some financial services companies offer suites of products tailored to physicians, such as Scotiabank, which acquired MD Financial Management in 2018, and pension service provider Blue Pier. Dr. Nick Voudouris says that at 64, he "missed the boat" on HOOPP's new rules. "Would I have loved to have had a defined-benefit pension plan? Would I love that, sure."
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