PCP Presidential Forum

Our college is hosting a forum on health, "What has health got to do with everything?” on March 16 involving 4 presidential candidates. It will be aired over primetime television (ANC) from 6 to 8 PM. Candidates Benigno Aquino III, Richard Gordon, Gilbert Teodoro and Manuel Villar will be participating.

Demand side (Patients and the Public)
– Inadequate level of public education on health
– Poor health-seeking habits of Filipinos
– Competing values & business interests (businesses, religious organizations, lobby groups)
– Poor access to healthcare (inadequate health insurance, high healthcare costs, intricacies of  health management systems and local devolution)

Supply side (healthcare providers)
– Manpower shortage due to migration and compensation disparities
– Manpower mal-distribution across the country (infrastructural defects; compensation
  inequities)
– Transactional medicine; the business of technology-driven medicine (inappropriate care)
– Inequity in resource allocation
– Healthcare providers’ values and self-interest ; attitude towards their role in nation-building

With or without the forum, the college's agenda will ,therefore, be focusing on four major areas. We are using these areas to frame the focus of the Presidential Forum:

1. Access & Equity in health
– Cost of healthcare
– Health insurance and coverage
– State of the local health systems
– Government funds and resource allocation for health
–L ocal health care management systems

2. Quality of Care; Efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare systems

3. Socio-economic, political and cultural issues that impact health
– Poverty and cultural attitudes toward health and healthcare
– Public information health education infrastructure
– Influence and impact of Big Business & religion on healthcare planning and execution
– Population management / Reproductive Health

4.  Human resources for health
– Health care providers’ education, migration, and distribution
– Compensation & equity

[To the members of PHA] send your questions under any of the 4 major areas. This can be done by either:
- emailing back to secretariat@ pcp.org.ph
- accessing the PCP website, www.pcp.org.ph , and clicking on the PCP Presidential Forum header. A prompt at the bottom of the page will lead you where the questions may be submitted. Please try to get our members to send in their questions as soon as possible!

The questions will be consolidated and organized. For the purpose of
conserving time, they will be asked by designated PCP members during the
forum.