Teodoro on improving Healthcare in the Philippines

The Philippine health system has been riddled with capital resource inadequacy, and technological shortage, much also has the issue of greener pastures convinced our top medical professionals like physical therapists, nurses, medical technicians to leave the country. Today, we are at the mercy of foreign aid to provide for some of the needs that need to be covered.

Today, we must tap solutions to find, fix and deter the problems in our health care system, and Secretary Gilbert Teodoro's well-made health care plan sufficiently answers these issues.


First, the national government cannot be in a perpetual state of financing local governments. What we must do is to have some sort of increased political autonomy to regions at the correlative cost of having a lesser share in the IRA while we must continuously support those regions which need capacity building with a higher share in the IRA, aiming to the endpoint that Local Government Units can become the sole providers of basic services, since this is a formula that has worked for many successful countries. Our health care system should be handeled by LGU's because their proximity supports the different topographies and conditions of their locality, and this cannot be completely foreseen by the national government. However, national government still reserves its interventionist powers in health. National government's role still becomes essential in certain types of cases like epidemics, disease issues and public health issues. But provision of health care is really a local government issue and several LGU's have shown that they can be creative enough through proper financial management to be able to afford quality health services to all.


Second, we also have to expand our universal coverage in health care with some contributions from the public on an optional basis. This establishes a universal participative health care system where everybody has a share in the common fund. Like Philhealth, this is a big contributor but we must have voluntary contributions re channeled, so that there will be bigger reimbursements for doctors and nurses. Here, the burden of health care is spread to everyone. The bottom line here is that the poor can get more, not merely in terms of medicine and the facilities, but we can also reimburse doctors and health care services so that they get a little more, reducing the chances that they'll end up migrating.


Third, to address the issue of brain drain, we also have to increase the public health sector's salaries, particularly in the rural communities where they are motivated to stay because they have other sources of livelihood. We can only advance this measure if we have a true blue universal healthcare system where the beneficiaries have the freedom to choose.


Fourth, we must also look outwardly and not only inwardly. Medical tourism in the country can be a site of international medical care and the financial services sector could also be looked into.


The problem of health has been an issue since time memorial, and this will continue to evolve and evolve, thus the dynamism of our solution must be embedded in institutional and structural reform which focuses on social and economic changes. This is the leverage of Sec. Gilbert Teodoro, compared to other candidates.


-Aaron Benedict De Leon, taking observations from Sec. Teodoro's healthcare plan-