Gibo: Medical tourism can help raise more funds for health care

CEBU, Philippines - Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard bearer and former defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. said medical tourism should not be frowned upon, but be viewed as a potent tool to raise more revenues to provide primary health care for indigent Filipinos.

Speaking during a health forum organized by the University of the Philippines Student Council in Manila, Gibo said solutions to the country’s health care woes should not be viewed as an isolated concern, but rather should be intertwined with other challenges facing government.

“(Medical tourism) is a potential revenue-generating mechanism that would provide more resources for health care,” Teodoro said during the first of a series of the ‘Make Health Count’ forums for presidential candidates.

“This can work both ways. I think it’s a good thing that we should encourage,” Teodoro said, in response to some observations that adequate, affordable health care remains beyond reach for poor Filipinos, as government promotes medical tourism.

Teodoro said it is pointless “to have healthy students who have gone through an excellent education when there are no jobs waiting for them because the government failed to nurture a favorable investment environment.”

“You cannot have a healthy student who goes to school of marginal quality, nor would there be a need for a good school when students are too unhealthy to go there,” he said.

Teodoro also reiterated his stand on the issue of reproductive health, which is to allow individuals the freedom to make the “moral choice” on how to plan their families, with government providing the resources to help them make such choices.

He said, however, that he has decided to withdraw his support for the Reproductive Health Bill now pending in Congress because the sectors involved in the issue are now attacking each other.

Teodoro said the real issue has been clouded by the acrimonious exchanges among the sectors affected by the proposed legislation, which would reportedly make the proposal difficult to implement if it gets passed into law.

“You cannot go into battle with one leg already limping…my point of view is you have to work with all sectors of society to get results,” Teodoro said.

“If acrimony prevails then there will be serious problems. Let’s assume that the Church and the moral guardians are correct, but the debate should not stop there because there is a problem and there should be accountability,” he added.

He said that such accountability would rest on society’s moral guardians.

Teodoro said that on top of providing resources, the government can implement a program providing cash incentives to couples volunteering to have fewer children along with long-term solutions such as addressing the problem of urban migration by providing a climate that would make the countryside more attractive to investors.

On other health concerns, Teodoro said Philhealth coverage “should not be dependent on whether local government units will enroll their constituents, but should be universal.”

Organizers of the forum said Teodoro “was the first to confirm and heed our call for meaningful dialogue about our people’s health.”

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