Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Malig: SB no. 2454 By Jun Malig Cognition
POVERTY should not be a reason to detain or hold hostage patients or cadavers, if only to show respect for human beings and for the government to come to the aid of these financially distressed families who can't afford reasonable hospital services, or mortuaries to provide decent care and services to dead bodies which equally deserve respect and honor.
This is the main point of Senator Alfredo "Dirty Harry" Lim when he filed last September 5 Senate Bill (SB) no. 2454 entitled: "AN ACT PENALIZING HOSPITALS AND FUNERAL PARLORS FOR HOSTAGING PATIENTS OR CADAVERS."
"Because of severe economic hardship resulting in the high cost of medical facilities and services, many of those who seek hospital confinement and treatment are unable to settle their bills with promptitude.
Some hospitals, wary of the problems of not getting paid, unscrupulously hold hostage patients in their hospitals until and unless the relatives are able to pay the bills. Meantime, the bills continue to pile up as the patient remains in confinement," Lim said in his explanatory note.
The bill has undergone first reading and is currently pending before the Senate committees on health and demography, social justice, welfare and rural development.
It is public knowledge that there are many cases or instances when hospitals -- both private and government-owned -- refuse to allow patients to go home and forcibly detain them inside the medical institutions until they pay their bills. Usually, hospital managements allow the financially deficient patients to leave only upon the interventions of public officials who serve as their guarantors. This is a prevalent practice of in every part of the country and it involves both private and public hospitals.
While Section 20, under the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Constitution, clearly states that "no person shall be imprisoned for debt or non-payment of a poll tax," such provision refers only to jails or penal institutions. And since the law is silent about detentions of poor patients inside medical institutions, hospitals can easily use as an excuse the patients' unpaid bills as the valid ground for the latter's detention. An enabling law, like the one being advocated by Lim, is necessary to do away with such a heartless practice.
The senator's bill also intends to penalize funeral parlors, morgues or mortuaries that refuse to release "the bodies of persons on whom they had performed mortuary services including burial (just) because of the relatives' failure to settle the fees."
"Hence, it is the bill's purpose to put a stop to the immoral and inhuman practice of hospitals or funeral parlors in using persons or dead bodies as hostages just to be able to compel the relatives to pay them for what they claim," the bill stated.
Section 1 of the measure declares that "it shall be unlawful for hospitals, lying-in, and medical clinics or infirmaries involved in the provision of care and treatment of patients to take hostage, custody, or detain any patient or even refuse to release or discharge the same for failure to pay in full his medical bills incurred for confinement, operation, or doctors' fees and other expenses chargeable to him, especially if said patient is already eligible for release save for this unsettled bills."
The measure further states that if and when the patient due for release is unable to immediately pay his obligations, "he may be required to execute either by himself or with the assistance of his relatives, an acknowledgement of the full amount of his indebtedness to the hospital and the doctors concerned, with an undertaking that he would pay his bills at a fixed period of time."
"In the case of a dead person or a cadaver, the acknowledgement and undertaking shall be executed by any of its relatives or next of kin or whoever shall voluntarily assume the liability," it added.
Should Lim's bill becomes a law, any corporation or business firm or entity that would violate its provisions shall be punished under Article 268 of the Revised Penal Code which imposes the penalty of reclusion temporal or imprisonment between 12 to 20 years. "In case of a corporation, partnership or any business firm or entity, the owners, directors, general manager or chief executive officer and treasurer shall be personally liable for such violation."
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Another crucial matter that should be looked into is the implementation of the government's policy requiring all hospitals and medical clinics to admit patients without the need for the latter to pay deposits that usually amounts to a few or several thousands of pesos. This would be tackled in my future columns.
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