I’m hell when I’m well but I’ve been sick lately.
The ever dreaded upper respiratory infection. More hardy folks soldier through it. I am prone to bronchitis and lung infections, so after a week of dragging myself around feeling like warmed over dog meat, I went to San Pablo Doctors Hospital to get checked out.
I don’t know much about Philippine medicine, but no matter where I go in the world for health care, one thing always holds true.
Take a book.
I took Red Flags by Juris Jurjevics, a great Vietnam War yarn. Check it out.
The waiting room was a wealth of humanity: people in wheelchairs and on gurneys, women with mewing babies, restless kids, Aunties on canes being led around by grandchildren.
Everyone was pleasant, patient and polite.
The doctor was scheduled to start seeing people about 10, but it was more like 10:30. Then things moved quickly.
It reminded me of sick call in the Navy, except you could sit down and wait instead of standing in line.
A nurse in pink with a clipboard called people into the office. Then she sent them back out to be called in again later.
My turn came soon enough. The only ID I showed was my Hawaii drivers license. The nurse asked a few perfunctory questions, checked my weight and blood pressure and sent me back out.
When they called me back in, I entered the very small, Spartan office of Dr. Martin Jamias, MD.
Jamias is a genial, easygoing man about 40, with a reassuring bedside manner.
Obviously we had never met but he found out a great deal about me in 15 or 20 minutes, listened to my heart and lungs, looked down my throat, poked around. He was in a hurry. There were a lot of people waiting out there.
He scribbled prescriptions (are there any doctors with good penmanship?) offered instructions and advice.
Rest a few days, he said, take it easy.
That’s what I do best, I said.
He smiled.
I had been told the fee was 500 pesos ($10) and I handed him the money.
Oh no, Dr. Jamias said, you are a senior citizen.
I got a 50% discount. He made change from his desk drawer.
That was it.
There is a charity hospital in San Pablo called City Hospital. People with no money (and there are many) can go there for basic medical care free of charge.
The country’s national health insurance program is called Philhealth.
Our housekeeper Marife’s family is covered by Philhealth. Her husband is a papaya farmer and they have four children. (The children are covered until they are 20.)
It is not unlimited, but it is major coverage. This costs 200 pesos ($4) a month.
It’s not perfect by any means. The rural areas have a serious shortage of doctors. Some uncovered medicines and procedures can be extremely expensive. I’m sure health care in the slums of Manila is very sketchy.
Nevertheless, this is being done in a poor country with rampant corruption that faces two armed insurrections -- one Communist, the other Islamic. Not to mention the bloody lawlessness carried out daily in the national War on Drugs.
Back home in the richest country on the globe, our two major political parties have been at daggers drawn for years over how to provide basic health care for millions of people who need it desperately.
This is incomprehensible to me.
