FORMER President and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has filed a bill seeking to protect any sale or disposition of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center by further strengthening and modernizing its facilities to serve the medical needs of Filipino veterans, retired soldiers and their dependents.
In filing House Bill 1240, Arroyo, a deputy speaker, proposed to give VMMC its own juridical personality to provide it greater flexibility and autonomy in its operations in order to serve its mission.
“Recognizing the invaluable sacrifices and services of our veterans and military retirees, it is only imperative that a medical facility dedicated to serve their medical needs as well as their dependents must provided stability, viability and ample resources to ensure that they receive quality medical and health services,” Arroyo said in the bill’s explanatory note.
VMMC is currently under the control and supervision of the Department of National Defense eiving a measly 1 percent of DND’s annual budget.
Unlike other government hospitals such as thePhilippine Heart Center, Lung Center, Kidney Center, Philippine General Hospital and Philippine Children’s Medical Center, VMMC does not have its own charter and has no other source of income to support the free care and treatment of veterans, retirees and their dependents.
Under Arroyo’s bill, VMMC will have its corporate entity which shall be governed by a Board of Trustees chaired by the DND secretary and vice chaired by the hospital’s medical director.
Other members will be the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Defense and Security; chairperson of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and Welfare; secretary of Health; administrator of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office; chairman of the Philippine Veterans Bank; president of the Veterans Federation of the Philippines; and three appointive members who are distinguished veterans in their professions.
The bill provides the members shall have the power to set rules and regulations that shall govern the administration and operation of the hospital as well as enter into agreements deemed desirable for the purpose of promoting its purposes and objectives.
Given the intent of Arroyo’s bill, Arroyo said the measure’s eventual enactment will protect any sale or disposition of the assets of VMMC as Section 16 of HB 1240 provides the core zone of the VMMC “shall not be sold, transferred, ceded, conveyed, assigned and encumbered.”
“The preservation of the value of the assets of the hospital shall be of primordial consideration,” she said.
The 55-hectare property was earlier reported to have been the focus of a development plan by the Ayala group eyeing it as a possible location of the North Integrated Transport System terminal.
The DND was also reported to be studying the sale or lease of its golf course.
But Arroyo said all existing assets of the VMMC must be under the control and supervision of the hospital with the issuance of all the corresponding certificates of landholding in its favor.
Arroyo also said while the board may approve the implementation of contracts, mechanisms and financial instruments to give the hospital the flexibility to generate revenues and other resources from land grants and other properties, such arrangements shall sustain and protect the hospital in accordance with law and be exclusive of the medical core zone of the hospital.
“(Any) mechanism and arrangements shall not conflict with the medical or health services and academic mission of the hospital; and any plan to generate revenues and other sources from land grants and other real properties entrusted to the hospital shall be consistent with the hospital mission and orientation as a vehicle to extend health services to veterans and their dependents,” Arroyo pointed out.