I was in a PUJ from Monumento on my way home to Valenzuela one afternoon when the driver stopped to pick up a passenger, or so I thought.
A man indeed went up the PUJ but he did not sit down, but instead balanced himself in a crouch in between the seats of the PUJ. He was asking for some financial help from us because his son was sick and was confined at the San Lazaro Hospital.
Ma. Teresa S. Habitan
The former Finance undersecretary says that if Philhealth management fails at its job, kick them out of their cushy jobs.
The man did not look like a vagrant, and he spoke courteously. He said that while his wife was at that moment in the queue to get assistance from the Malasakit Center of the hospital, that amount together with their savings and his expected wages that week were still not enough for the medicines required by their son.
Some of us passengers gave him a few bills and he got off the jeep, perhaps to get on another PUJ to ask for some more help or to go back to the hospital, I do not know.
This incident took me back to sometime in May 1977, just a couple of weeks from myUP graduation, when I had to be hospitalized for at least two days. I had been feelingunwell for several days, with low grade fever, and bouts of diarrhea. Before that, I hadnoticed a growing feeling of weakness, which was alien to me, as I had always been inthe pink of health through my four years of college life.
Anyway, my parents brought me to the Mary Chiles Hospital in Sampaloc, not becauseit was closest to where we lived in Malabon but because my dad’s aunt used to be a chiefnurse there and all my five siblings were born there. So, it was familiar to us and myparents knew some of the staff there as well.
I later learned that they took me to the hospital, confident I was still covered by Medicare, the precursor of Philhealth. Alas and alack, I had just turned 20 years old in April, and my dad discovered, too late, that this made me ineligible to remain one of his dependents.
Thankfully, my Mom found another financing source and so they were able to get medischarged. In short, Mom borrowed from one of my aunts, her sister of perpetualsuccor.
That was 1977. It’s important to note that we were not among the poorest of the poor and we owned our house. Yet, the combined salaries of my parents, who were both public schoolteachers, did not allow them to have the kind of savings to take care of emergencyhospitalizations for their children.
Nearly a month after that hospital stay, I entered the DOF and began what would be afour-decade career in public finance. I have always supported Universal Health Care(UHC) as an advocacy as well as the need for health insurance. Still, I know so manypeople postponing medical consultations due to lack of funds, and often seeing a doctor only when it is too late.
I wondered how much better the ordinary Filipino family's access to healthcare has become under UHC.
Judging by the story of the father begging complete strangers for financial support, it seems we still have a long way to go. Lest readers think we were just a group of naïve passengers scammed by that man on the jeep, I know of family and friends who have had to borrow money for chemotherapy treatments or solicit help from politicians, among others.
I have contributed to GoFundMe for others who were suffering from critical illnesses and who required expensive treatments. Again, these family and friends were like my family – middle class, not the poorest of the poor, employed, but with savings depleted because of how expensive healthcare is in this country.
For this I would say that the government’s universal health care program can still beimproved in implementation and coverage. For one, the program is assured of fundingfrom the proceeds of excise taxes on tobacco products, alcoholic drinks, and sugarsweetened beverages.
Formal members also pay premiums. Coverage for informal members is or should be financed by what has been loosely called “subsidy” to Philhealth. It is in fact not a subsidy to Philhealth the corporation, but a subsidy to the millions of Filipinos who cannot afford to pay Philhealth premium.
Removing said subsidy to Philhealth diminishes the benefits to the likes of the sick boywhose father had to go begging in PUJs and whose mother had to patiently fall in linefor dole outs. Such an action deprives the poor Filipino family of their dignity and self-respect and does little to provoke Philhealth management to do a better job.
If Philhealth management fails at its job, kick them out of their cushy jobs. That is theway to do it, and not through curtailing universal health care access.