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Thursday, September 07, 2006
Wenceslao: Health care
By Bong O. Wenceslao
I was a student activist when Yoyoy and many others were nabbed in a sweep of alleged underground safe houses in Cebu City in 1980. Yoyoy, with his acting talent, was then identified with the cultural group. Their subsequent detention sparked a fight against the military tribunal (martial law was not lifted yet then) that heard their case.
One hearing that was held, if my memory serves me right, in a building across the Police Regional Office 7 headquarters was tumultuous. When the tribunal opened it, Yoyoy recited the opening lines of Amado Hernandez poem, “Lumuha Ka Aking Bayan.” Security people rushed to shut him up. The detainees ended up putting masking tapes on their mouths while students in the audience shouted slogans. Hearing cancelled.
Yoyoy is leading a normal life in Leyte but he talked with me recently about the case of his younger sister, who is sick with the rare illness lupus erythematosus and was admitted for a week at the Chong Hua Hospital. To recall, lupus also afflicted former strongman Ferdinand Marcos. I didn’t know there’s a lupus organization in Cebu.
A few other members of Yoyoy’s family had been sick with lupus, and his sister got ill apparently because of fatigue and stress. She worked in a Cebu City eatery that doubled as karaoke bar at night, with the owner tasking her to attend to both. When she got sick all that the owner could give for her hospitalization was P10,000.
At the hospital, Yoyoy observed up close the state of this country’s health care. For lack of vacant bed in the isolation room, the patient was confined initially in an expensive private room, then in a cheaper one. There he noted that the more expensive the room, the better seemed to be the service provided by hospital people.
Before Yoyoy’s sister was confined, she went to a doctor that diagnosed her illness as hyperthyroidism. At the hospital, professional courtesy required the retention of the services of the doctor, who teamed up with a specialist that correctly diagnosed the patient as being ill with lupus. Previous medication was discontinued---a waste of money.
After a week, Yoyoy’s family decided to have the patient discharged from the hospital. To his surprise, the first doctor billed them almost twice what the specialist asked. Yoyoy complained. It turned out the doctor thought the patient’s employer would pay the bill. When told that wasn’t the case, he accepted the same fee as the specialist.
I share Yoyoy’s sentiments. The state of health care in the country, which I noted early on having been a sickly person growing up (I was asthmatic), was one of the reasons I embraced the utopian dreams of communism.
FREE-FOR-ALL. Former sports editor Paul Taneo informed me that he has brought his column Free-For-All to his new blog at paultaneo.blogspot.com thus giving martial arts fanatics a new online forum. I checked the site and even with only three posts comments have started pouring in. Good start.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0915-9228651/my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (September 7, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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