‘… don’t you agree that it is a bit obscene for our political leaders to be patronizing private medical facilities that the general public can’t afford?’
DO you remember that time when St. Luke’s was the hospital of choice for politicians facing arrest?
Just before the long arm of the law could nab them, their doctors came to the rescue. An existing health issue worsens or a new one becomes manifest, requiring admission in either instance. So rather than end up behind bars, the politicians end up under some doctor’s care in an executive suite in St. Luke’s BGC, or sometimes St. Luke’s QC, with the Makati Med, the Medical City and the Asian Hospital also options for those who live closer.
I mention this not because I dislike the hospitalization of the characters involved — I would like to give them and their doctors the benefit of the doubt about the need to have them admitted. What I dislike is something else: the fact that our politicians troop to the best hospitals that money can buy, while the ordinary man on the street is left to troop to public hospitals, including, if they are lucky, the Philippine General Hospital.
Allowing our politicians to patronize private facilities, in my book, gives them less incentive to move heaven and earth to elevate the number and quality of our public health facilities.
It’s the VIP culture all over again that has Juan dela Cruz getting the short end of the stick.
I think this should change and I have a suggestion: why not convert a part of an existing public hospital into a wing dedicated to our politicians? Let them suffer the consequences of poorly equipped medical facilities for the general public — or let them be inspired to spend more of their confidential funds on improving the hospitals that could very well be saving their lives tomorrow or a year or two beyond!
For this purpose, my first suggestion would be the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Diliman, the same facility that housed two of our ex-presidents. It is a low-rise facility built on a sprawling property and would be an ideal hospital for politicians who would want some privacy.
My second suggestion would be the V. Luna Medical Center, also in Diliman, which is the hospital of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. V. Luna is our equivalent to the Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where US presidents and other politicians go for treatment. (As far as I know, the only exception is John Kennedy, whose body was sent to the then-existing Bethesda Naval Hospital upon the request of his widow because Kennedy was a navy man.)
Think about it: if the hospital is good enough for veterans or active servicemen, then it should be good enough for our president or VP or legislators and local government officials, yes?
Finally, there’s PGH, whose central bloc may be used for this purpose. The only downside of PGH is the risk that an attending physician turns out to be a UP student activist who realizes he will do the country a bigger favor if he pulls the plug on his patient! (Wait… that doesn’t sound like much of a downside, yes?)
Kidding aside, don’t you agree that it is a bit obscene for our political leaders to patronize private medical facilities that the general public can’t afford? And that it would be much better if they instead checked into government-funded medical facilities.
Who knows, this may, in turn, “encourage” them to divert more funding to the improvement of our government health facilities!
Then they can now truly claim na “One with the masses” na talaga sila!
