‘Cremate now, pay later’ OK’d as part of pandemic aid for poor

As morgues strained under the weight of unclaimed bodies of patients killed by the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), officials have agreed to new measures, including a “cremate now, pay later” scheme to ease the burden on indigent families as well as on hospitals.

The measures were crafted in a meeting on Friday among officials of the Philippine National Police, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and other agencies, as well as representatives from funeral and crematorium services.

Hospitals have been sounding the alarm on the rising number of unclaimed corpses in their congested morgues, increasing the risk of infection in those facilities. Logistical issues, lack of communication between funeral companies and hospital morgues, and socioeconomic barriers for indigent families come into play.

P25,000 aid

Crucial among the proposals is the “cremate now, pay later” scheme of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), for deceased indigents whose bodies their families are unable to claim because of steep hospital and burial expenses.

Under the scheme, a P25,000 cash assistance would be allotted for each cremation, to be halved between the funeral service company and its partner crematorium.  The DSWD has yet to announce when this package’s implementation will take effect.

The agencies that met on Friday also agreed that crematories should accept the bodies of all Covid-19 cases regardless of residence.

Meanwhile, a lawmaker said the government should shoulder the cost of burying or cremating the remains of coronavirus victims.

Reimbursement system

“We should spare [their families] such pain and agony. That is adding insult to injury, since they have already lost their loved ones to this deadly virus,” Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said in a statement on Friday.

Rodriguez said a reimbursement system may be set up at the level of local government units (LGUs) to shoulder expenses for coronavirus fatalities, under which the government can later pay the LGUs.

On Monday, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases directed all local governments to ensure that COVID-19 fatalities were cremated or buried within 12 hours.

The Makati government responded by announcing it would assume the cost of burials and cremations in the city.

‘Not like Makati’

Rodriguez pointed out that most LGUs “are not like Makati in terms of financial resources, [hence] the national government should help them by reimbursing the full cost of cremation/burial of COVID-19 patients’ remains.” On Thursday night, President Rodrigo Duterte appealed to crematoriums not to jack up the prices of their services.

“May I ask you to maintain the price of cremation before and [after the] quarantine. Meaning, a price that we won’t have any problems with—give it to your client. I am pleading with you,” Mr. Duterte said.

Earlier, the government authorized LGUs to impose price caps on funeral services and penalize those who would refuse COVID-19 fatalities.

Mr. Duterte also ordered the Department of Health to investigate nine hospitals that allegedly rejected patients suspected to have contracted the coronavirus.

“I’m sorry, but you know there are rules to be followed. You begin to fuck the rules, we will have a problem,” the President said in a televised address. “If you cannot be a hospital, I’ll just close you down. Why pretend to be a hospital when you’re not a hospital? Because you cannot choose the patients that you have to attend to medically. I hope I have made myself very clear on this.”

‘Dangerous’“I know it’s dangerous. I know that in ordinary times, it’s unreasonable. But I said, we have a crisis and it’s killing people,” Mr. Duterte also said.

“You do not choose the ailment of the patient you are accepting. It is not just simply not within your power, morally. So look for ways to deal with the problem because you are a hospital,” he said. —WITH A REPORT FROM DJ YAP