Lawmakers slam gov’t for selling state hospitals

The Philippine Orthopedic Center INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Two lawmakers are speaking out against the sale of state-owned hospitals to private companies, the latest of which is the P5.69-billion buy-out by the Megawide-World Citi Consortium of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC).

Party-list Representatives  Emmi de Jesus of Gabriela and Lito Atienza of Buhay Hayaang Yumabong said the Department of Health should fully disclose not only the details of these takeovers but also its contingency plans on where the displaced indigent patients could turn to for their health requirements.

“Public service will not be its top priority because it does not want to lose money. The contract will not end just there because it is renewable for another 25 years,” said De Jesus in a privilege speech, questioning the privatization of hospitals. She said the transfer to private companies of public hospitals such as Dr. Jose Fabella Medical Hospital, San Lazaro Hospital, and Dr. Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center to the private sector has put in question the welfare of poor patients who could not afford the cost of treatment in privately run hospitals.

De Jesus cited the case of Daisy Cervantes, a 38-year-old housewife who was paralyzed from her waist down after falling from a mango tree last year, and who has been benefiting from free medicine and other services as a Class D patient of the POC in the last four months.

De Jesus said: “Daisy is not alone.  Eighty-five to 95 percent of 200,000 indigent patients depending on POC every year could be dislocated with the privatization of POC. Where will the 500 patients admitted daily in POC’s wards go when Megawide-World Citi consortium has alloted only 70 beds (out of its 700-bed facility to be built at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute compound in Quezon City) for the poor?”

Atienza warned that the privatization of public hospitals would leave indigent patients with no alternative as past experience showed that any public service that went into private hands (such as power and water utilities) “inevitably led to higher costs.”

Atienza questioned why the government would abandon its duty of providing public health service to its citizen by selling its hospitals to private businessmen, instead of pumping in billions of pesos to modernize and expand these facilities.

De Jesus noted that the DOH itself admitted that lack of funds was the main  reason why  the POC  facility along Banawe Avenue, Quezon City has not been renovated or expanded since it was built 50 years ago.

“The government not only abandoned POC, it gave it away to businessmen,” said de Jesus.

She said that the people would prefer dependable public services to dole-outs from their representatives or  local government officials.

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