Health care
Posted by: Fats in: Wika at Hirap > KatawanHopefully, I am now on my way to recovery. It was a very difficult three weeks and being plagued by a different sickness each week. After the flu, were four nights of painful sinus pains.
Friday the 13th I managed to feel better enough to go out and see a doctor. (Earlier that day, a hospital maintenance staff fell down the elevator shaft and died; quite a freak accident). I phoned the Caritas health insurance to get info for the nearest EENT doctor. This is the first time I’ve used the health insurance program, and the first time I’ve ever had health insurance. It was my partner who got it for me.
There is a state health insurance system (PhilHealth) as government is mandated to provide all citizens of the Philippines with the mechanism to gain financial access to health services (the Philippine National Health Insurance Act of 1995). However, of course, government cannot provide for the health care of the entire population, and thus efforts by the private sector to assume part of the responsibility have been undertaken. If I am not mistaken, private insurance companies in the Philippines are one of those few sectors allowed to be completely foreign-owned and to operate in the country.
Also, in the 90s, health care was devolved from national to local government. Cooperatives have also instituted “health micro insurance schemes” for areas where commercial health insurance is not possible because of the costs as well as applicability when it comes to remote villages in the country. These schemes aimed to provide some level of health insurance through the social capital of the community-based health care.
In 2002, sources of expenditure for health in the Philippines was:
State insurance (5%)
Out-of-pocket (46%)
Government (38%)
Private sources (57%)
Private insurance (2%)
Others (9%)
-From “Health Micro Insurance in the Philippines The NATCCO-SEDCOP Experience”
Although I taught 8 years at state university, I never became a permanent employee - my appointment was simply renewed every year. I was taxed, of course, and, when I got promoted in 2000, paid contributions to the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS). But I never got health insurance. Also, I needed to be paying contributions to GSIS for at least 15 years to qualify for any benefits and pensions when I retire. But the way things actually were with teachers have not been very encouraging, with all the horror stories that retirees tell about claiming their pensions … Family members who served in government all their lives (and not teaching at state university!) had better experiences when they retired.
Anyway, at least I did not have to pay expensive doctor’s fees last Friday, although the antibiotics did cost a lot (nearly PhP1,000 for 14 tablets). At the drugstore, the sales clerk asked if I wanted to buy all 14 tablets indicated in the prescription, and I said yes. I had to and did not want to risk missing a tablet - if I did, that would make the bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
The woman in front of me in the queue took an awfully long time because she was having such a hard time deciding which drugs she would buy first with the money she had (apparently not enough to buy all the drugs she needed). That broke my heart, to see how expensive drugs were for most people… she bought the other drugs but didn’t get the fever tablets for her kids anymore. I suppose she could use the medicinal plants abundant in Manila if she knew how to use them to treat fever. That’s what Noemi, our cleaning leady at the apartment, does - when she was down with flu she took “lagundi.”
There’s plenty of lagundi growing in the communal garden here around our apartment blocks. Girlie, the maintence woman, has a small hut in one of the gardens and all around here were growing the lagundi, as well as a male and female papaya tree, and a small horseradish tree. All these have medicinal uses.
In my mom’s house, we now have plenty of oregano. They’re used for treating coughs. However, they’re not as common as lagundi because they are a bit more difficult to grow.
Anyway, with the medicinal plants, we could deal with simple ailments like fever, stomach upset, cough, etc. But treating more serious ailments like TB and other pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases (which are quite prevalent in a city of so much pollution) require expensive drugs. I believe Thailand, India and Brazil have defied huge phramaceutical companies in order to lower the cost of drugs by producing if not importing generics. The cost of drugs in the Philippines is one of the highest in the world and I hope this changes very soon.
In the meantime, in the effort to shift to the Euro (if not keeping the budget deficit down in the EU), many East European countries have changed their health care systems: imposing fees on doctor’s visits, fees on prescriptions and emergency services, fees per day in hospital, slashing drug subsidies, terminating their free drug program, and opening the health insurance system to porfit-making companies.
I guess this is how countries are dealing with globalization and health care. In the context of the EU and for many East European countries, the state of health care since the end of the Communist era means the re-thinking of the value of money (vis-a-vis the value of life) within the globalized economy. Obviously, cutting the EU deficit is more important than universal access to sound health care systems, just as paying foreign debt service and budget for military and defense is more important here in the Philippines.
When I e-mailed Hung Hsien that I couldn’t go to Taiwan next month because of poor health, he told me not to worry about the Wikimania conference and that “health is everything”. At another digital art conference in Taiwan in 2004, it was usual to get a greeting of “good health.” Quite true, what is all the work and all the income if one is unhealthy?
However, in the world of globalized economies, money is wealth and health is valuable only insofar as it is one of the exploitable commodities. What a tremendous shift of values it must be in Eastern Europe as those contries’ policy makers cut down on social welfare to race to the Euro … Politicians say that people have to start paying for health care so that they would not overuse medical services and to force people to be more considerate about the money they are spending. According to politicians, the change in East European policy is good for people who have been used to not paying for health care in the past … so the politicians are telling us what is supposedly good for us by asking us to cut down on health care and spend more.
