A negative view of PhilHealth....

Found this on the blogosphere, written by Dr. Alfonso Amores who's based in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. It's a less than stellar view of PhilHealth, the government agency mandated by law as administrator of the National Health Insurance Program. Without any allusions to it being accurate or not, I'm sure a lot people I know who visit this blog would find this interesting. The original post can be found here, in Dr. Amores' Lapu-Lapu Times.



PHILHEALTH - HEADING FOR DISASTER

When I first came home about 5 years ago, I started hearing about "Philhealth". Then I started hearing about the cards being given to the indigents (arguably for election favors). One time, there was a big news about how the City of Lapu-Lapu gave free Philhealth cards to thousands of squatters. The city paid some millions for it, but when I computed it, it was barely Php1,000 per family per year (God knows how many in the family). The big news that came with it was that now, all health care needs of the family was taken care of. Dream on! Php1,000 will not even buy one one day's antibiotics in case of a serious infection.

Everybody got into a celebratory atmosphere, dancing in the streets and lauding the success of the government in giving this favor to the poor of our society. No one stopped dancing to ask: "Wait a minute, who's paying for this?" We are! Remember how may thousands of cards were given away as the election was approaching? We are paying for all of that now. By some actuarial estimates we are short by no less than Php50-100 billion.

In my 20 years of practice in Plastic Surgery in the USA, I lived right through the growing pains of Medicare. It was a huge mess (still is a mess today). Simply, the US government just could not afford the price.

And we can? Heck! We could not even pay the principal of our foreign debt! Still, people in the government are talking about national health program. No!No!No! We are too poor. We cannot afford that.

Here is a set of free advise to the people in the know in the government:

* If you really want to be altruistic (meaning all through the cycle, not just election time), have a charity health insurance program (let's call it say, Medicaid). This is not Philhealth. There are honest limitations: good for government hospitals only, no private clinics, etc. And, only families that are below certain income level can avail. Everybody above gets Philhealth or private insurance..voluntarily.

* For Medicaid and Philhealth programs there are limitations too. First and formost, there has to be a Utilization Review Committee for every participating hospitals. (We in the US realized this too late. Only when Medicare was tethering on the brink of bandruptcy did we impose this). This will prevent physicans, hospitals and patients abusing the system. Remember a few years back when more than a dozen hospitals in Bohol were caught overbilling Philhealth?

Comments

TK said…
don't get me started pre.
February 02, 2006 7:36 PM
Ronald Allan said…
Hahaha. I sort of expected that. :-)
February 02, 2006 8:02 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commonwealth Ave. lot for Lease

Image
For lease, 261 sqm commercial lot near east-bound lane (going to Fairview) of Commonwealth Ave. Quezon City, between Tandang Sora and Ever Gotesco, directly opposite PNB . Accessible via 50m access road. No improvements on said property. For inquiries call 09228692272 or email ronallandottk@yahoo.com
Read more

Is aspartame safe?

Image
Do you know what aspartame is? Well, even if you don't, given its ubiquitous nature, its a virtual certainty that you have already crossed paths with it in your life at one time or another. For the uninitiated, aspartame is a low-calorie sugar substitute most often used in carbonated beverages, you know, the diet or lite variety. Here in the Philippines, it is commonly known by the brand names NutraSweet and Equal . The reason why it has significantly fewer calories is because its not carbohydrate based. Its a methyl (methane derivative) ester (organic compound) dipeptide (two amino acids joined by a single peptide bond) consisting of aspartic acid as the first amino acid, and phenylalanine as the second. Its about 180 times sweeter than typical table sugar, and as such, a little goes a long way. A single pellet of Equal (18 mg of aspartame) has about the same sweetening strength as a teaspoon of ordinary white sugar (about 5 ml). Do the math. It was first discovered in 19
Read more

Peddling Snake Oil - The Khaos Super Turbo Charger

Image
Photos courtesy of Ghosthunter If you drive or are at least into cars, no doubt you've probably heard at one time or another about the Khaos Super Turbo Charger . It's a device that is claimed to drastically reduce the fuel consumption of your gasoline driven vehicle by as much as 50%. It created such a hype when it was introduced in November 2003 after glowing reviews and endorsements from, among others, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Makati Land Transportation Office (LTO) and Taiwan’s Automotive Research and Testing Center. Even Malacañang got into the picture, and presented the inventor, Pablo Planas, with a Presidential Award Medal for Outstanding Invention. All in all, various government agencies and government officials got into the picture, singing the praises of a device that miraculously reduces fuel consumption by a significant margin. As a result, in less than a year, more than 3,500 units were sold and installed to customers who swear by the product's effe
Read more