"What a cruel joke."
The family just laid to rest an officer and a gentleman, a retired Colonel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. In his full gala uniform and with the Philippine flag draped over his coffin, this 80-year-old soldier was accorded the full honors, complete with the 21-gun salute before finally being brought to his final resting place at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
I met the man and his spouse years ago when his son and my daughter became engaged and decided to marry. A quiet, gentle, smiling guy he was. He was mild-mannered and spoke gently that I would not have guessed that he was a soldier if I was not told. I would later learn that he was, in every way, the pillar of his family, and an icon to his children.
Thus, he deserved all the honors. He served his country for the better part of his life with an unblemished record. Before he passed, he was President of his local chapter of the Veterans Association of the Philippines. Beyond these, he was the epitome of a family man. He was, indeed, a hero in his own right.
What he and his family did not deserve was how our country’s health system failed to provide for his needs during his last months.
Indeed, at 80 years of age, health issues were expected. He had a heart condition and was admitted to the Philippine Heart Center on Oct. 18 of last year. Besides the PHC specialists, we have doctors in the family, my daughter and his son (my son-in-law) and so we were confident with the medical decisions that were made.
Our patient needed a life-saving heart procedure. Because of his age and other health conditions, the doctors decided against an open heart surgery and opted for the very expensive Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement. The estimated cost was about P2.5 to P3 million.
The family decided to deal with the costs after. What was most important was to save his life. No middle-class family will readily have access to this kind of money but life was at stake. After all, our patient was a senior citizen and a veteran, so the family was hoping for some assistance from PhilHealth and the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office. By law, the PVAO is supposed to shoulder a good part of the expenses. Also, isn’t the government singing hallelujahs to the new Universal Health Care Act? These were reasons to be hopeful.
Just days after the procedure, the medical bills were piling up. The first I saw amounted to P2.6 million despite having already paid a few hundred thousand pesos. Worse, the family was told that the PVAO would not shoulder any of the bills at that time because the Memorandum of Agreement between the PHC and the PVAO was not renewed for 2019. The family needed to settle all the bills first and then, some would be reimbursed by the PVAO after some time. Great! I thought.
And so while taking care of the patient, we set forth to raising money for hospital bills. We were told that politicians contribute money for hospitalization. But we would need to ask them one by one. I despise asking for favors, especially money for my own purposes. My family has not done this until now. I have worked with politicians for many years and I have always been careful to not ask for personal favors.
I have reached out to a few, those with whom I have developed relationships, and only for the benefit of others in critical need, never for myself or any of my family members. The situation we were in was different. We needed to beg for life.
I made a list of politicians I would personally call, and the rest were assigned to my son-in-law and his siblings. Then the begging began by calls, letters, visits to offices, unending followups. These went on for more than two months.
It did not help that because of the family’s inability to pay the bills in full, there were times, I think twice, when the hospital threatened to stop the treatment and medications for our patient unless he was in critical condition. Universal health care you say? We learned the hard way that it does not exist.
So we experienced how it was to be at the receiving end of politicians’ “awa” and it does not feel good. We know that whatever was contributed was people’s money but still, we feel that somehow, we owe these politicians. This is the reason why ordinary people feel beholden to them. This is pure and simple patronage politics.
Do not get me wrong, we are thankful to those who helped, especially the few who needed no follow-up and readily contributed to the hospital bills of our soldier. We are also grateful to family friends who assisted by approaching government officials they know.
Still, our health system is such that you will not get the medical services you need if you are without money, and know no one in position. Obviously, public money is there but the system placed it under the discretion of politicians who then disburse them as political favors. This makes people feel small, very small, in relation with their patrons. The unequal power relations become more pronounced.
Still, what we raised was not enough to cover the hospital bills and the family still has substantial amounts to pay.
On Dec. 23, our patient was released and was supposedly home for the holidays. But he was again rushed to the PHC the following day where sadly, he expired.
The family buried an honorable soldier as a hero but our health system did not treat him as one. In the end, his many years of service to the country he loved was not even given due consideration. If someone like him was failed by the system, what can we expect on behalf of the millions of ordinary Filipinos?
Our health system sucks and universal health care is a cruel joke.
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