"We hope the Universal Health Care bill sees the light of day with the onset of the new year."
"We hope the Universal Health Care bill sees the light of day with the onset of the new year."
Had this piece of legislation been signed into law by now, it would have made a nice and fitting Christmas gift to the Filipino people, especially those living on the edge of poverty. Nevertheless, we hope this sees the light of day with the onset of the new year.
We’re talking about the Universal Health Care bill, which seeks to give our people access to affordable and quality health care.
The Senate approved the bill last October, while the House of Representatives passed its own version in September last year. A bicameral conference committee passed the consolidated version of the Universal Health Care bill on Nov. 27.
The measure will “provide all Filipinos immediate eligibility and access to preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative care for medical, dental, mental and emergency health services, including out-patient drugs, by registering them to a primary health care provider of their choice.”
One of the salient features of the bill is the automatic enrollment of all Filipinos into the National Health Insurance Program of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. either as direct or indirect contributors. Direct contributors are those who have capacity to pay premiums, while the indirect contributors are indigents and senior citizens, among others.
The proposed law also aims to improve public health facilities and address gaps in human resources for better health service delivery.
The passage of such a bill is actually long overdue. The 1987 Constitution provides that the State “shall protect and promote the right to health of the people and instill health consciousness among them.” Further on, we have this: “The State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development which shall endevor to make essential goods, health and other social services available to all the people at affordable cost. There shall be priority for the needs of the underprivileged sick, elderly, disabled, women and children. The State shall endeavor to provide free medical care to paupers.”
The bill seeks to assure steady funding for the health care program from the incremental collections from the Sin Tax Law, 50 percent of the national government share from the income of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., 40 percent of the charity fund from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, as well as contributions from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and appropriations of the Department of Health.
What’s crucial is to ensure adequate funding for this landmark legislation. The DOH, in coordination with PhilHealth, may request Congress to appropriate supplemental funding to meet the financial requirements of the full implementation of universal health care.
Under the bill, PhilHealth payments for local government unit hospitals shall be set aside as a special health fund and be used to improve the health facilities and health service delivery of the LGUs.
It also provides that all graduates of allied and health-related courses who are recipients of government-funded scholarship programs shall be required to serve for at least three years in the public sector.
While we await the enactment of this bill, we’re glad that the national government will spend P9 billion to deploy more than 13,000 health professionals to underserved communities next year.
The Department of Health is now enlisting 9,138 nurses, 3,650 midwives, 243 physicians and 241 dentists to provide additional medical services in the rural areas.
Of the P9 billion for the Human Resources for Health Deployment Program, P7.8 billion will come from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund, with the balance of P1.2 billion from the DOH.
To augment regular staff, the DOH has been contracting extra health professionals every year to serve under various programs. These include Doctors to the Barrios, where physicians serve for two years mostly in fourth to sixth-class municipalities that have not had a doctor in the last 24 months; Medical Pool Placement and Utilization, where physicians and medical specialists are deployed to DOH-run provincial hospitals; Registered Nurses for Health Enhancement and Local Service, where nurses serve for six months in community rural health units and another six months in public hospitals; and Rural Health Midwives, where midwives are assigned to barangay health stations and rural health units to provide maternal and child care services, including basic as well as comprehensive emergency obstetric and newborn care.
The DOH encourages qualified health professionals looking for gainful employment to sign up so they can help underserved communities while getting adequate compensation. The acquired training from the service would also help qualified professionals land even better jobs in the future.
With universal health care and free college education in state-run universities, we move closer to a kinder, gentler and more humane society where everyone can have access to vital social services to improve their quality of life.
Merry Christmas!
ernhil@yahoo.com