[OPINION] 5 thoughts about the Philippine healthcare system

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'There is a lot that needs to be done with regard to our healthcare system, from reducing hospitalization costs, increasing worker wages, and avoiding potential price-gouging, among other concerns.' ThoughtLeaders

A two-week confinement recently and a longer one last year for COVID-19 got me thinking about the Philippine healthcare system and hospitalization costs, in particular. As I lay in bed waiting to heal, I had five thoughts about the medical system.

Membership in HMOs is advised to help manage the extraordinary cost that goes with hospitalization but this stops after 65 years of age, a time when seniors will need more health care, not less. PhilHealth is useful but limited. The senior discount was helpful in my case. Yet after all these deductions, the out-of-pocket was still substantial. Personal debt is resorted to and if through informal sources, could carry with it high if not exorbitant rates of interest.

Three, from my conversations with nurses and nursing assistants , I came to find out that they are grossly underpaid. Nurses in the private hospital were paid a monthly salary of P22,000. They told me that nurses in government hospitals had a higher monthly salary of P36,000.

This is an often-heard refrain: Nurses looking or actually migrating to greener pastures. In my dialysis center, four dialysis nurses have migrated to Canada, the US and Germany in the last two years. These are highly trained medical professionals that we lose to other countries. And there are more are in that pipeline.

The Universal Health Care Act was enacted “to realize universal coverage through a systematic approach and clear delineation of roles of key stakeholders towards better performance of key agencies and stakeholders in the healthcare system.”

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

 

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