In response to a spate of road accidents involving so-called camote drivers, Dr. Teodoro Herbosa, secretary of the Department of Health (DOH), has proposed that erring motorists be excluded from the government’s Zero Balance Billing (ZBB) policy.
Meaning, if a motorist is admitted to a public hospital due to a road accident and was at fault for violating traffic laws like failure to wear a helmet or drunk driving, he or she will be disqualified from the ZBB.
Providing for free comprehensive health care in state-run hospitals, the ZBB is a policy that ensures that patients need not pay out-of-pocket fees for their basic ward-type hospitalization, laboratory tests, medicines and professional fees.
When President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. announced it recently, the policy was met with wide public approval. Now, his latest move of returning P60 billion in excess funds from the national budget to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) is expected to further boost the ZBB.
But Herbosa’s plan to deprive at-fault drivers of free health care smacks of class legislation. It is downright discriminatory, violates the principle of equal protection and lacks a substantial connection to the policy’s purpose.
No wonder, our friends from the Lawyers for Commuter Safety and Protection (LCSP), a legal advocacy group in the transport sector, are objecting to Herbosa’s scheme, which it says is “fraught with legal, ethical and practical flaws.”
The group asserts that the DOH and Philhealth are not authorized to determine if motorists have violated traffic laws since such authority lies solely with the courts or quasi-judicial bodies.
The LCSP further adds that since hospitals are not competent to determine if a patient is a traffic violator, the ZBB exclusion raises questions like, “Will a police blotter, a medical report, or mere allegations suffice? Must there be a court conviction?”
Without clear guidelines, the policy might open a floodgate of errors and abuse while overburdening hospitals with investigative functions, the LCSP argues.
Needless to say, I agree that all of these will defeat the purpose of the ZBB as an instrument of universal health care, unnecessarily depriving accident victims of much-needed benefits.
If the DOH wants to promote road safety, it should instead collaborate with traffic law enforcement agencies such as the Land Transportation Office, the Philippine National Police and traffic offices of local government units.
Health authorities, after all, stand to contribute substantively to traffic education since we haven’t really heard much of the health side being taught as an important part of the subject.
Smoking, sleep deprivation, lack of proper nutrition, drug abuse, physical inactivity, stress and anxiety are some of the health issues that need emphasis in traffic education and who can better discuss these than health authorities themselves?
The government’s duty of attending to the well-being of its citizens should be unconditional. Access to health services must not be hampered by unproven suspicions of wrongdoing, especially since the Constitution provides that everyone is assumed innocent until proven guilty.
In fact, if we stretch it a bit further, Herbosa’s proposal to deny the ZBB from erring motorists runs counter to international human rights agreements advocating for the provision of health care to incarcerated felons. Applying his plan to correctional facilities would be like leaving prisoners to rot in jail.
I therefore support the LCSP’s call to abort Herbosa’s proposal.
Adequate, timely and accessible health care is a constitutional right and traffic violations are not a ground for its denial.