Former Cebu City mayor Michael Rama’s argument for the city to have its own hospital may be well and good but to reiterate the painfully obvious, he isn’t around in City Hall anymore to make it into a reality.
What was left of his work in rebuilding the decades-old hospital, which was severely damaged by the Oct. 15, 2013 earthquake, are some unfinished floors and blueprints that bespoke of his original grand design to set up a world-class medical institution that, in his own words, will become part of a one-stop shop in one area that can respond to medical and police emergencies.
Then the revelations came about how the CCMC didn’t have a building permit and that the hospital itself is encroaching on another lot. Whether these are simple technicalities that can be fixed immediately or not doesn’t matter to incoming Mayor Tomas Osmeña who isn’t too keen about preserving the work that his predecessor and erstwhile protégé started.
Enter the Movement for a Livable Cebu, who vigorously opposed the flyover projects lobbied by Osmeña and Rep. Raul del Mar of Cebu City’s north district and are now objecting to the suspension of the rehabilitation work on the CCMC.
Like Rama, they supported the completion of the CCMC but though they may have read correctly the current public sentiment on preserving the city hospital rather than scrapping it, they would be hard-pressed to convince Mayor Osmeña to change his mind not to rebuild it.
In fact, the mayor repeatedly said he would rather spend the budget being spent annually for the CCMC which would easily run to billions of pesos to provide every indigent beneficiary a PhilHealth medical coverage worth hundreds of pesos.
He said it would be enough to entice private hospitals to compete with each other in taking them in for treatment. It sounds logical enough, but why then do city residents including the poor still clamor for a city-owned and managed hospital?
We remember Rama saying his administration won’t hesitate to spend billions to produce a Cebu City hospital, but if we are to believe Osmeña’s allegations about the overspending done by the city hospital staff in procuring medicines for the poor, then the city may just as well be flushing precious taxes down a money pit that is the CCMC.
If what acting Mayor Margot Osmeña said about the city’s commitment to continue building the city hospital is true, then the incumbent administration may be expected to scale down on Rama’s grandiose vision of building a world-class CCMC for one that is less expensive, yet fully functional.
Unless of course, the MLC and other groups who volunteered their services to build the city hospital are willing to help raise funds for its construction.
Speaking of which, we hope the millions of pesos raised in donations for the CCMC can be accounted for.
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