Look around you. Ask yourself a simple question: Why is getting sick in the Philippines still a death sentence for the poor?
When a mother has to queue at three in the morning outside a public hospital just to get a number… when a father has to choose between buying his maintenance medicine or putting rice on the family table… when an elder dies not because their illness was incurable, but because they couldn’t afford a single ICU bed—that is not bad luck.
That is not an act of God. That is a political choice.
For decades, we have been lied to. We’ve been told that our healthcare system is broken simply because the country is poor. But the truth is far more sinister: our health system is broken because it was designed by people who never have to use it!
Look at who sits in the halls of Congress and our municipal halls. Are they public health experts? Are they doctors who served in the barrios? Are they community health workers who know what it’s like to run out of basic antibiotics?
No! They are political dynasties, landlords, and millionaires. They ride in air-conditioned SUVs to private clinics abroad while our rural health units crumble. They do not know our lived realities, yet they make the decisions that dictate whether our children live or die.
To them, healthcare is not a fundamental human right—it is a political commodity! They withhold funds from public hospitals so they can hand out “medical assistance vouchers” with their faces printed on them. They make us beg for hospital guarantee letters like peasants asking for scraps from the master’s table! They use our desperation to buy our loyalty, trapping us in a vicious cycle of poverty and patronage.
And it gets worse. Look at the laws they pass—and the laws they kill.
When they allow mining companies to poison our rivers and coal plants to pollute our air, who gets sick? Our communities. When they fail to regulate land grabbers and real estate developers who destroy our farms, who starves? Our families.
When PhilHealth funds are plundered while poor patients are turned away at the door, who pays the price? We do.
The politicians who craft our laws are the very same people who own the unsustainable businesses, the private hospitals, and the real estate conglomerates that profit off our misery!
Their bank accounts grow while our life expectancy shrinks.
This is not governance. This is corporate capture. This is violence against the Filipino people!
It is only right to issue a clear and uncompromising call: WE MUST RESIST.
We must stop accepting healthcare as a political favor! We must stop thanking politicians for giving us a fraction of what our taxes already paid for!
We must demand political reform in Philippine healthcare, and we must demand it now:
First: We demand an end to patronage medicine! No more politician names on ambulances. No more guarantee letters. We demand direct, fully funded, universal budget allocations straight to public health facilities!
Second: We demand an end to dynastic conflict of interest! Lawmakers who own mining firms, coal plants, and private health monopolies must not be allowed to dictate our health and environmental policies.
Third: We demand a health system rooted in social justice—where health workers are paid living wages, where public hospitals have complete medicines, and where no Filipino ever goes bankrupt just to stay alive!
Health is not merely the absence of disease. Health is clean water, safe jobs, a living wage, a protected environment, and human dignity.
Public health cannot survive under political oppression. Reclaiming our health requires reclaiming our power. Let us organize in our communities, join hands with our health workers, and build a movement that forces the ruling elite to listen.
Defend our health! Resist political control! Fight for a free, public, and just healthcare system for every Filipino! (davaotoday.com)
