ONE of the best pieces of news coming out of Malacañang these days is the announcement that part of the P72-billion stimulus package the administration unveiled for the last quarter, in a catch-up effort to offset the adverse impact of its underspending, will go to upgrading key specialty hospitals that many of the poor turn to in medical crises.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said on Thursday the national government allocated P742 million to upgrade the medical services and facilities of three facilities in the so-called Bopis Complex in Quezon City: the Philippine Heart Center (PHC), the Lung Center of the Philippines and the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC).

Besides the Bopis Complex, a beneficiary of the stimulus fund is the state-funded health insurance, surely a vital need in these times. According to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, P1.5 billion is being set aside to cover the government’s arrears to PhilHealth; and another P3.5 billion was earmarked for the National Health Insurance Program this year.

“The Aquino administration recognizes that safe and efficient health care should not be a privilege of a few but a right of every Filipino. This fund release will support necessary upgrading of our specialty hospitals so that citizens, especially the poor and the marginalized, will have access to safe and effective health-care services,” Abad said in a statement.

Of the total amount for the three government hospitals, P357 million will be used to upgrade PHC’s infrastructure and medical equipment, according to the DBM.

The Lung Center will get P105 million for two key programs, which are the Bioregenerative Program (P70 million) and the Pediatric Pulmonary Program—the latter being crucial, considering the high rate of children with lung diseases.

The PCMC will need P280 million for additional capital and to renovate and rehabilitate the 30-year-old building, one of several set up during the Marcos administration.

Those were the cheers; now the jeers. The budget support for the three specialty hospitals that serve so many ordinary Filipinos, and the move to update payments to Philhealth and expand the national health insurance, still pale in comparison with the mind-boggling demand for health services around the country.

One can go to any state-funded hospital, whether funded locally or nationally, on any given day, and be distressed with the pitiful conditions of facilities, equipment and the low morale of the health workers who not only make do with meager wages but often shell out their own money to help patients—as any one who has interned at the Philippine General Hospital will attest to.

The demand for state-subsidized hospital care is rising to dangerous levels these days, given the string of disasters that has visited the country, leaving behind the trail of diseases—leptospirosis, pulmonary diseases, gastroenteritis and related diseases from polluted water sources, as well as dengue and skin infections that could sometimes be fatal, if unmanaged with timely and proper doses of antibiotics.

To make matters worse, not a few public hospitals have themselves been victims of the historic floods, and have taken a hit to equipment and other supplies, and patient facilities.

The problem of funding health care is relevant these days not only because of the disasters but also because of the review of the state of things, as occasioned by the 20th anniversary of the Local Government Code.

The so-called Father of the Local Government Code, in a recent interview, acknowledged that health-care devolution is one of those areas where the results of what was touted then as the most revolutionary, pro-people reform are now, two decades after, still somewhat sketchy.

Former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said the devolution of health care has sometimes been tainted by politics. In short, the national government’s responsibility for the people’s health, which the local governments should have taken over, is sometimes held hostage to the vagaries of local politics. Pimentel points to the abundance of district hospitals that were set up on congressional behest, but then were left poorly funded after the chief proponents had left office. Worse, the bigger, older hospitals that should have been given better attention and funding after the LGC took effect, have been languishing, as well.

To be fair, there are a few LGUs that have taken rather seriously their responsibilities to provide health care for their constituents, but they are more the exception than the rule.

The Ospital ng Makati (Osmak) in Fort Bonifacio and its satellite emergency unit on Malugay Street, perhaps exemplify the positive impact of having LGUs that take health care seriously. The Osmak services, not surprisingly, are part of the overall health program of Makati City, which trailblazed in local government financing for health care with its Yellow Card two decades ago.

Perhaps a simple illustration of how some hospitals that are locally funded and run can make a difference is the favorite story of one of this paper’s senior editors, whose wife and daughter figured in a road crash several years ago. Good Samaritans took  them to the Ospital ng Maynila, where  their facial cuts were stitched so well their scars are barely visible. He learned weeks later why such services rivaled those of expensive private tertiary hospitals: turns out the Ospital ng Maynila had been given an unprecedented boost in terms of funding for facilities and equipment upgrade, as well as for hiring more highly skilled people, because it was part of the then-Atienza administration’s Buhayin ang Maynila redevelopment program.

Unfortunately, for every well-run and well-funded local hospital, there must be 50 others that are so deprived they mirror the state of their patients in overcrowded, filthy corridors: “they just lie there, and they die there,” as the spoof of Frank Sinatra’s “Mona Lisa” song goes.

In the same manner, the nearly P1-B funding to upgrade three of the hospitals in the Bopis Complex may be welcome news today—but this benevolent fiscal initiative must be part of a bigger scheme, where ordinary taxpayers who have no money for health care can have the assurance that the state will provide them with adequate safety nets for those medical crises.

It’s no secret that many a family has been plunged into irremediable, permanent debt as a result of the medical emergency of one member. Wonder no more why many would rather keep their ailments to themselves, and die, rather than mortgage the future of their children and grandchildren.