Watch those price increases!

Whoever said the R-VAT will not affect the prices of goods should probably go and see either a priest and confess for lying or a psychiatrist for failing to recognize what is true and real.

We would like to invite you to send in your observations of all the increases that you have noticed in the food that you buy or consume, the utilities that you pay for, even the medicines that you purchase.

We know for a fact that a certain heart medicine increased by at least P10 per tablet! Is that legally allowed? Another medicine, this time for diabetes, also increased by P0.70 per tablet.

Who's checking on all these price increases? Who is guarding against unauthorized, abusive price increases?

We hope that The Freeman will allow for a Consumer's Column or space soon so that our readers and the public can help the proper authorities monitor price increases and so that the rights of the consuming public can be protected.

While waiting for that, please feel free to write your observations or complaints to this column or this newspaper. We will do our best to attend to your questions whenever possible.

On a related topic, a civil society colleague asked for advice about which hospital she could bring a very ill relative to. The discussion concluded with the wish for a more patient-friendly hospital in Cebu, to be run and managed by local equivalent of Patch Adams, those health practitioners who still adhere to the Hippocratic oath of serving their clients.

How many good doctors and health practitioners are left, in this country or in Cebu, who actually put public service as their first and sole priority? How many medical experts and specialists are left who prioritize the poor among their patients?

Which hospital in Cebu also welcome and take care of the poor among their patients? We ask this because, as many of you probably have experienced, present hospitals seem to be too commercialized nowadays. The patient does not only have to worry about his illness and about how to get well. The patient even has to worry about what he needs to bring to the hospital and worse, about the high prices he will need to pay for his hospitalization.

Let me cite recent examples. We were so distressed to know that we had to bring our own basin and towel to apply cold compress to our son after we rushed him to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. His temperature suddenly shot up to 40 and wishing to avoid convulsions, we asked that the emergency staff apply cold compress on him. They answered that we had to do that ourselves, with our own hand towel and our own basin! Not having any labacara or tabo with us, we ended up using all our available handkerchiefs. A kind staff, seeing our distress, kindly lent us a tabo. What if we did not have our handkerchief or tabo? Would the ER staff just have watched our son start to convulse?

In another hospital, we were also shocked to learn that even plain cotton was no longer free to be shared with the patient. Every item to be used inside a hospital seems to have a price tag on it. If the patients want to save, they are advised to bring their own items instead!

Those who can afford to do so may have no problems with these present hospital requirements and procedures or the availability of experts for their sick. But what about the poor, who total to millions in this province and more, throughout this country?

Those who resort to faith healers and practitioners of alternative medicine are scoffed at for their ignorance. It may not just be lack of knowledge that can explain this behavior of not going to so-called licensed, health providers. Commercialization of health and medicine seems to have gotten out of control. Rather than making it their business to treat and heal the sick, there are those in the health profession who seem to have made sickness a business.

There is an ad that advises the public "bawal magkasakit." In the midst of escalating price hikes, with limited or no budget to spend for healthy and sufficient food, with daily stress about how to survive and eat, and increasing bouts of despair and hopelessness, it has become very difficult for many of our people to stay healthy, or even to stay alive.

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(E-mail your views to [email protected])