Hontiveros bats for universal healthcare

MANILA, Philippines - Former Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros promises to focus on healthcare if she succeeds in her second senatorial run in three years.

“The dividends of the anti-corruption campaign of the Aquino government should go to services like healthcare,” she said. Her principal agenda in the Senate would be to make universal healthcare “truly universal.”

She would advocate and work for increased government spending on this vital service.

“We need to invest more, not just in terms of public spending, but also in terms of political will to deliver universal healthcare. We need to improve private healthcare services. There has to be tighter regulation of private facilities so that out-of-pocket expenses are reduced and profiteering is prevented,” she said.

She wants the government to create a “robust, viable regulatory climate in the health sector – in terms of setting standards for health services so that the rights of patients are protected, in coming up with reference prices for essential drugs and services, reducing procurement costs of medicine and other health commodities, and regulating private HMOs so that competition is enhanced and cost lessened.”

Healthcare programs would be more aggressive on prevention, Hontiveros said.

“We need to strengthen our community health services and establish programs that can prevent leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the country: heart-related disease, hypertension, diabetes. We save more resources and we save more lives if we focus more on prevention than on treatment. The same is true with the growing HIV epidemic in the country,” she said.

She also plans to work for more benefits, and better education and training for healthcare workers so they would opt to stay here instead of looking for overseas employment.

“We need to take care of our healthcare personnel,” she said.

Hontiveros is a staunch human rights advocate, an excellent and competent lawmaker, an award-winning broadcast journalist and a dedicated single parent to four children.

She entered politics in 2004 when party-list group Akbayan nominated her as its representative in Congress. She served for two consecutive terms, building a solid track record as a fighter of corruption, a health advocate and a pro-women legislator.

As a member of the House of Representatives, she consistently supported efforts to impeach then President Arroyo.

As a member and later as former member of Congress, she pushed hard for the enactment of the Reproductive Health bill, which is now a law and which she believes is a pro-life, pro-choice measure.

Despite being part of the opposition to the Arroyo administration, Hontiveros managed to push for the passage of two of the bills that she principally authored and championed in the House: the cheaper medicines law, which aims to lower the cost of essential medicine, and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) Law, which has given farmers the chance to own the land they till.

She was author or co-author of other bills which are now laws, including those on compensation for human rights victims during martial law and the Milk Code.        

As a broadcast journalist, Hontiveros was awarded the Golden Dove for Best Female Newscaster by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas in 1994.

She was a scholar at the Ateneo de Manila University, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in AB Social Sciences. She is a former theater actress, and she once performed with Lea Salonga and Monique Wilson for the Philippine staging of The Sound of Music.

As a peace advocate, Hontiveros received the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for Peace Advocacy from the Philippine Jaycees in 2001.

At the age of 22, she became secretary-general of the Coalition of Peace. In 1988, she served as a member of the government panel for peace talks. She received a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2005 for her work in the peace talks with the National Democratic Front.