‘The felony DNA is nevertheless not restricted to the politico. It can be discovered amongst complicit contractors, engineers, educators, legal professionals, economists, troopers, and even medical doctors.’
Corruption underneath the Executive Branch is nothing new even because it resurges with a vengeance underneath each the earlier and present administrations.
The creativity concerned has developed into an artwork. The pork barrel modus is old hat. One recent innovation is to subcontract procurement processes from line businesses to the Department of Budget and Management. Another is perhaps to tuck expenditures underneath Confidential Intelligence Funds or belatedly realign permitted budgets. A fourth is thru institutional financial institution heists underneath a pretend sovereign fund.
The historically corrupt contain high-ticket public works, agriculture provide chains, healthcare funds, and rural well being clinics. Nothing has modified besides maybe an emboldened give attention to catch-up or remedial infrastructure. Recent non-infrastructure anomalies contain fattening middle-man margins for agricultural merchandise and private protecting gear. Add additionally the insidious depletion of pre-need healthcare funding.
Obviously, not all contain excessive capital expenditures. Many are retail starting from barangay ghost tasks to over-pricing, to pay-offs and payola involving retail penny ante transactions in buying and distribution.
Somewhere, as shadowy puppeteers lurking within the catwalks, a politician is invariably pulling the strings.
The felony DNA is nevertheless not restricted to the politico. It can be discovered amongst complicit contractors, engineers, educators, legal professionals, economists, troopers, and even medical doctors – that career satirically sure by an oath to “do no harm.”
To be a healer is among the many noblest callings. That can’t all the time be mentioned of politicians. Here we give attention to a twisted diabolical double helix entangling politics and physicians. In their confluence, discover how the interwoven DNA strands recreate RL Stevenson’s gothic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the place a doctor violates his Hippocratic oath remodeling Hippocratic to hypocritical.
It is just not troublesome to quote examples spanning administrations. Today’s political atmosphere has warped into one that permits the Jekyll-Hyde Janus to go about their business scot-free, shamelessly enriched, residing lavishly and free to hunt public workplace. Let us evaluation a handful to disclose a typical denominator – that every is based on widespread poverty and revenue inequity.
Economists decide inequity by the Gini Coefficient which measures the revenue of the richest in opposition to the poverty of the poorest.
According to the Medicines, Technologies, and Pharmaceutical Services Program of USAID, customers within the Asia-Pacific area whose economies fail to offer adequate common healthcare companies (UHC) face excessive out-of-pocket bills the place healthcare inflation and prices outpace per capita GDP. Since these account for over half of all healthcare expenditures, they affect on Gini inequities because the wealthy are capable of afford well being care whereas the poor are pressured to depend on UHC, authorities applications, native authorities officers’ medical outreaches, pork barrel tasks, or just the kindness of strangers.
Such reliance is invariably contaminated on the quantum stage with a political DNA. Unfortunately, in social media, the medium of option to access the poorest, low cost placebos, faux or unregistered treatment, experimental medication, and false remedies are peddled alongside actual however costly drugs and the entire package deal is legitimized by in style endorsers together with quacks, celebrities, and political wannabes.
Note examples the place the poor are manipulated, victimized, and twice-over taken advantaged.
Prior to looking for an prolonged presidential time period, one candidate had co-opted a authorities medical companies and pre-need fund to distribute Philippine Health Insurance Corporation playing cards to a sector of the general public in determined want of medical health insurance and reasonably priced companies.
The abuse of fiduciary belief and the next fund depletion attributed to political appointees plus the continued infighting between well being officers and the fund’s fiduciary officers stay festering wounds that affect negatively on the poorest who depend on the establishment.
Under one other presidency, a cupboard official negotiated for the acquisition and distribution of an experimental vaccine through a nationwide inoculation program concentrating on college kids sans requisite vetting crucial to find out whether or not the youngsters had been seropositive or destructive. Such dedication was crucial. So was the shortage of knowledgeable consent. Prior to its approval the experimental vaccine had displayed lethal side-effects in trials. Unfortunately, the push to inoculate coincided with cash-outs for an on-going political marketing campaign.
Under a 3rd presidency, going by comparative information, a strong political job pressure prioritized the procurement and distribution of an anti-COVID 19 vaccine whose efficacy was a low 51%. Post-mortem rationalization ranged from procurement and provide chain bungling, missed alternatives, the shortage of planning, and the geopolitical affect of a hegemon the federal government sought to ingratiate itself underneath. Needless to say, low efficacy vaccines place the general public at higher dangers. On a per capita efficacy foundation, these are additionally the most costly. Combined with pandemic administration surrendered to politically appointed unqualified ex-military males wielding Draconian police powers resulted in an financial system worst hit relative to others. Again, the poorest pay the best costs.
Under the identical well being officers, painfully seared in our collective reminiscence is the P18.8-billion Pharmally medical provides scandal facilitated by an undercapitalized start-up and a small workplace on the Executive Branch manned by political appointees and involving political cronies and international nationals. Ironically, a development firm was likewise concerned.
Note the convergence of the demand for unfulfilled healthcare with the will for competent political management. In the 2022 marketing campaign interval, a doctor had earned a preferred following by Facebook sufficient to qualify him a sought-after co-runner and contender within the final presidential derby.
Because of the poor state of well being care, particularly the prohibitively excessive prices of treatment and coverings, following social media platforms in style with the poor, these, together with celebrities and physician endorsements have turn into digital drugstores peddling low cost albeit harmful magical potions, cure-alls, and snake oil.
One physician has filed a grievance in opposition to unscrupulous peddlers and web sites. That’s a begin nevertheless it hasn’t torn aside the infernal relationship between dubiously supplied healthcare and politics.
The cybercrime statutes want revisiting and the authorities have to act aggressively on different fronts. With the prevalence of political falsehoods on all media platforms concentrating on the vulnerable, in comparison with different types of criminality and corruption, healthcare crimes inflict instantly on the poorest amongst us. – Rappler.com
Dean de la Paz is a former funding banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based energy firm working within the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable power firm and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor. He collects Godzilla figures and vintage tin robots.
