Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Adanza, NOPH head defend local health insurance
NEGROS Oriental third district Board Member Marcelo Adanza strongly defended an ordinance creating a local health insurance for the province, saying the same will benefit the majority of the poor constituents.
Adanza is the principal author of the ordinance creating the Provincial Health Insurance of Negros Oriental (Phino).
Dr. Ely Villapando, one of the top officials of the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital, also defended the ordinance and emphasized the readability of the medical attention of the poor with the local health insurance in place.
Dr. Villapando considered one of the brains behind it, clarified that the ambitious program, which aims to bankroll the medical expenses of the province's indigents, does not intend to compete with the National Government's PhilHealth.
This assurance was pronounced amid reports that some mayors are still unconvinced of the soundness of the program.
Adanza, in one of the meetings of the league of municipalities, emphasized that Phino will not compete with PhilHealth but only to complement it.
Dr. Villapando, who belongs to the technical working group that created Phino, also bared that there are only about 51,000 persons enrolled to PhilHealth in the province, while Phino will cover 56,000 additional individuals who are classified as poorest of the poor and can be serviced by the primary and district hospitals that at the moment are not recognized by PhilHealth.
"They are our target, the underprivileged, the disenfranchised but later on we can expand our coverage to include the self-employed to achieve real universal health care," said Villapando.
Under the set up, Capitol has already set aside P15 million as seed money and will be working out with memorandum of agreements with the local government units (LGUs) throughout the province on the terms spelled out in the ordinance, including its mandated counterpart contributions.
Dr. Villapando said initially, each enrollee of Phino will pay P1,200 to be shouldered equally by the LGU and the Capitol.
However, Adanza said that in the case of third to fourth class municipalities, Governor Emilio Macias II wants the payment sharing to be 75-25 in favor of the LGUs.
Both top ranking Capitol officials are confident the local health insurance is a win-win formula because after the calendar year, the unused funds will stay in the hands of the government and can be used to acquire state-of-the-art medical equipment.
