A first-term Quezon City congressman has filed a bill seeking more benefits to government physicians to attract more doctors to the government service.
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Assistant Majority Leader Anthony Peter Crisologo filed House Bill 3923, which aims to provide a minimum compensation of P80,000 to P90,000 monthly to the new doctors.
He says HB 3923 would apply to all physicians who are regular employees of local governments and the national government who provide service at least 40 hours a week.
The bill would also provide subsistence allowance and hazard pay to the physicians assigned to far-flung areas or to the places hounded by an active insurgency.
Amid the growing shortage of nurses, meanwhile, a legislator from the Visayas on Sunday called for a new program that would provide cash bonuses and career incentives to “inactive” nurses who wish to restart their profession.
“We have thousands of nursing graduates who have not been practicing their profession. Some of them are already registered nurses, while the others never bothered to take the licensure test after graduation,” Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said.
Over the years, Gullas says, many nursing graduates have become airline flight attendants, business process outsourcing staff or sales agents of real estate, insurance and automotive firms.
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“The massive economic dislocation and job destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic might provide these nursing graduates who are not practicing their profession the chance to rethink their career paths and go back to nursing,” Gullas said.
Senator Grace Poe says doctors who brave the frontlines—with or without a pandemic—to give their services for free to where health care needs are at their direst deserve recognition and incentives.
In her Senate Bill 1715, or the Physician Pro Bono Care Act, Poe wants physicians rendering free services to indigent patients to be entitled to a tax credit to be deducted from their gross income.
“A number of doctors have taken it upon themselves to volunteer and render free health services to our people who cannot afford to seek medical attention," she said.
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"The tax incentive is a way of giving back for their selflessness, commitment and expertise.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto wants the government to increase the salary of social workers in the public clinics and hospitals, saying they are also considered front liners in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
He says the best “belated thank you card” that the government can give social workers is to make their minimum pay equal to nurses or P32,035 a month.
Social workers, Recto says, have the biggest number of clients in a hospital.
He says anyone who lacks the money, which means most of those who seek treatment, automatically becomes their “patient.”
“This is because all those who are hospitalized share one comorbidity: poverty. It is fatal. This is a land where every family is one major illness away from bankruptcy,” Recto said.