Four Quezon City-based specialty hospitals are facing budget cuts next year, which are “all deep and none superficial,” Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto said.
But Recto assured that “if the past will be the guide,” the recommended budgetary subsidies for the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Heart Center, the National Kidney and Transplant Institute, and the Philippine Children’s Medical Center in the proposed 2023 national budget will be restored by Congress.
“The yearly ritual is that those tasked to prepare the national budget will propose an amount lower than the current year’s, and then both chambers restore the cuts or even increase the subsidy,” Recto said.
Based on their charters, the four are classified as government corporations, and as such, their appropriations in the national budget are officially called “budgetary support”.
Budgetary support forms part of a recipient agency’s annual operating budget, subject to restrictions, the foremost of which is that it cannot be used for salaries, which must be funded out of operating income.
Recto said from P684 million in the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA), the proposed budgetary subsidy for the Lung Center of the Philippines will be trimmed by P53.7 million, to P630.2 million.
The amount for the Philippine Heart Center will be slashed by P121 million, from P1.88 billion in this year’s GAA to P1.76 billion in the 2023 National Expenditure Program or NEP, which serves as the draft national budget.
But it is the National Kidney and Transplant Institute which is threatened with the deepest cut of P362 million – its subsidy down to P1.15 billion in the 2023 NEP, from P1.5 billion in the 2022 GAA.
Also facing substantial subsidy reduction is the Philippine Children’s Medical Center, from P1.5 billion to P1.15 billion, or a P344 billion cutback.
Recto said those who recommended the cut in the subsidy for the four Quezon City neighboring hospitals “may have slept through PBBM’s SONA wherein he hailed the four as worthy of replication in regional centers.”
“Or they might have missed the line in PBBM’s Budget Message where he again reiterated this dream,” he said.
“Somebody probably did not get the memo,” said Recto who believes that Malacanang vetting probably missed this fine print in the”3,842-page, three-volume” proposed national budget.
“Yung budget kasi is a spreadsheet consisting of 150,000 lines of numbers and provisions,” he said.
Recto said the four hospitals should be “spared of budget cuts, not because these are legacy institutions close to the President’s heart as they were built by his parents, but because these are excellent hospitals our people have come to value.”
“Yung Heart Center is an indispensable national necessity. It is a referral hospital. Kung kailangan i-vulcanize ang ugat sa puso mo, ito at ang PGH ang mga hospitals of last resort,” Recto said.
He said “the budgeting philosophy we should follow is that frontline hospitals, Heart Center man yan o district hospital, should be off-limits to budgetary scalpels.”
Recto said proponents of said budgetary support levels “will probably justify their move by saying that previous augmentations done by Congress were for one one-time equipment purchases, and therefore not automatically rolled over to the next fiscal year”.
But these hospitals should always be expanded and improved as their patient intake is growing every year, Recto said. “There is no pause button in hospital improvement.”
“Kahit idagdag pa ang pondong matatanggap ng apat na ito mula sa P23 billion na Health Facilities Enhancement Program, ang bottomline ay kulang pa rin,” Recto said.
Waiting period at the Heart Center for indigent patients in need of procedure now stretches to months, Recto said. “Kung babawasan mo ang pondo, e di parang binawasan mo ang oxygen ng isang Covid patient.”