No pork, no problem for hospital

BACOLOD CITY—The absence of the corruption-ridden pork barrel system will not stop medical aid to the poor, at least in the case of a state-run hospital in this city.

A top official of Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH), said the absence of pork, which was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, could be offset by an increase in allocation from sin taxes.

Dr. Julius Drilon, chief of CLMMRH, said all the government had to do was double the allocation for universal healthcare from proceeds from sin taxes to make up for the loss of pork barrel allocations.

Drilon said in the case of CLMMRH, the hospital could still attend to poor patients who could not afford medical care even without the pork barrel system because the government’s universal health-care system was now in place.

The hospital last year received at least P17 million in pork from congressmen and senators supposedly for the poor. At least P6 million of the amount was unspent, said Drilon.

This year, with the sin tax funds for universal healthcare having been doubled from P12.9 billion in 2013, the government was enrolling 300,000 more families in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Drilon explained.

Under this scheme, an indigent who is brought to CLMMRH but has no PhilHealth coverage, can be immediately enrolled in the system.