Mayor Belen’s officials put her in bad light

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Two security guards in Angeles City were nabbed in Dagupan City after they robbed in broad day light an Indian national who stood in front of Nepo Mall.

DagupanCity Mayor Belen Fernandez (2nd from left)
and City Health's Chief Leonard Carbonel (extreme
left).

The guards moonlight as robber riding in tandem on a motorcycle victimizing Indians who are into the usurious 5-6 lending business. They were ruthless that they were suspected to shoot some Indians in some towns.

"O sarge, nakita ko sa Face Book ng station niyo buhay pa iyong holdupper, ano ang nangyare?" I posed. The veteran policeman could just shake his head. "Paano kasi sir, iyong mga humuli mga bagitong police noong magka habulan na. Kung iyong mga matatagal na (police) patay na ang mga iyon kasi may dala pa silang baril".

A police chief in Central Pangasinan told me when I said that those malefactors were suspected to be ruthless: “Kung dito iyan sa jurisdiction ko nahuli, kahit sa harap ng simbahan ako na mismo ang babaril sa kanila”.

When I told the City’s cop that those robbers could just post bail the following day. "May mga case na inaabangan sila after mag piyansa at doon na sila inuupakan?"

He said that should be a logical plan, but those habitual delinquents see to it that they brought their families to deter the hired hands to assassinate them after they go out of jail or court through bail.

***

Dr. Roland Mejia, chief of the Region 1 Medical Center (R1MC) told me that Dagupan City’s Health Chief Leonard Carbonel and colleagues put in bad light Mayor Belen Fernandez at the national government offices.  He said they wrote that he (Mejia) was billing Mayor Fernandez on the indigent patients that come from the city. Mejia said how he could bill them when he had no Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Dagupan City to do it. What he had done, he told me in my Q&A that can be found somewhere in this paper, was to report to the mayor how much her poor patients financially consumed at his hospital and they were no longer covered by Rep. Gina de Venecia’s more than P5 million social funds.

Instead Carbonel et al immediately wrote PhilHealth, Commission on Audit and the Department of Health –Central Office that these people should be covered by the PhilHealth’s No Balance Billing (NBB) program because the city allocated funds for them at the government health body.

The NBB is a PhilHealth policy mandating that no other fees shall be charged or paid for by the government health agency’s patients and dependents who availed of any of the identified 22 medical and surgical cases under the case rates package payment scheme.

 The primary objective for introducing the case rate packages is to provide optimal financial risk protection especially to the most vulnerable groups which are the poorest of the poor.

Mejia and staff wrote the same offices to rebut the claim of Carbonel et al:

“They are allocating a certain fund for the indigents which is not a PhilHealth members then hindi siya papasok doon sa No Billing in the sense hindi naman siya member ng PhilHealth”.

(Was the act of these officials fooling or swindling the government? –MCO)

But Mejia said he had  already solved the problems created by the city government by bailing them out by using the social funds of his hospital.

As you know R1MC earns tens of millions a month from paying patients while it used these profits to those who could not pay. These funds should supposedly be equally allotted to indigents in Region 1 and not only in Dagupan City.

The Problem: Because of the ugly media reporting that put Mejia initially in the spot I suspect that any poor patients from Dagupan City who are not PhilHealth member and who cannot pay his bill at R1MC would now be the looked out of Mayor Fernandez as some folks at R1MC are no longer eager to play favorite with them.

My Question: Does Dagupan City have enough funds to bankroll incase these indigents cum rich source of votes for Fernandez are confined at R1MC?

***

Forget R1MC, Mayor Fernandez had inked last March 9 a MOA with the  Dagupan Doctors Villaflor Memorial Hospital  (DDVMH) for the latter to adopt the ‘no balance billing policy’ and ‘point of care’ POC) enrollment for indigents and underprivileged.

 POC enrolment program targets non-members who belonged to Class C-3 or D confined in government hospitals.

The program will also benefit existing members not currently eligible to financial protection due to lack of qualifying contributions and also classified as Class C3 or D.

POC is where those qualified  patient who used the intake survey sheet prescribed by the DOH shall be enrolled and paid for by the sponsoring hospital (like DDVMH) in the amount of P2,400 and valid "from the first day of the confinement month and shall end on the last day of the same year."

Mayor Belen Fernandez’s critic broadcaster Ruel Camba guffawed when I told him the MoA with DDVMH where the latter accepts poor patients.

Ruel said he was skeptical on DDVMH capacity to accept as many indigents from the city.

“I’m going to investigate it how many have already availed of the POC”.

He agreed with me when I told him that then Mayor Benjie S. Lim was right when he allocated funds for a city hospital to serve the residents because he could not depend on R1MC as it beds capacity cater to the people of the four provinces and seven cities Region 1.

When Fernandez became mayor, by beating Lim in 2013, one of her first acts was to scrap the multi-million pesos lying-in hospital of Lim that she and her supporters considered as waste of public funds.

Now Mayor Belen has to deal with this gnawing issue that poor patients in Dagupan could not totally be accommodated for free in R1MC because of what her officials had done to Mejia”.

***

I wrote in my last column that Manny Pacquiao’s performances against Floyd Mayweather would be affected because in his two fights with Brandon Rios and Tim Bradley he could not knocked out the duo. I said those were the two matches Manny subjected himself into random drug testing from Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA) in the U.S.

Pacquaio used to have drug test under the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) when his urine had been tested. But many experts doubt the accuracy of NSAC to catch cheaters.

Blood testing U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), on his fight with Mayweather on May 2, is more stringent and accurate in checking if an athlete used the illegal performance enhancing drugs (PED). The Mayweather camp accused Manny to use PED before that affronted the camp of the latter thus the $5 million damage suit they filed against Mayweather.

But when a surprisingly stronger Juan Manuel Marquez knocked down and Knocked out Manny in the 2nd and 6th Rounds of their 4th Fight, Michael Konz, Pacquiao’s top adviser was heard to say that the bulking Marquez, who looks like a mini Incredible Hulk, should subject himself to USADA incase he wants a 5th rematch with Pacquiao.

“Marquez is 40 years old with muscles popping out, acne all over his chest. Elevated testosterone levels in teen males cause acne." Much of the controversy with Marquez is due in part to his working relationship with conditioning Coach Angel “Memo” Heredia. Heredia was discovered to have administered performance enhancing drugs to US Olympic athletes, including multi¬gold medal winner Marion Jones. He was later locked in jail because of this criminal offense. Since Marquez's association with Heredia, many insiders have noted the increased muscular build on the Mexican veteran," “BoxingScene.Com said on its article’s ”Pacquiao-¬Marquez 5 Would Involve VADA Testing “.

In the coming Mayweather-Pacquiao tiff, it would be interesting to see how the body of Pacquiao functions.

  Random drug testing is where blood is extracted from the body of the athlete any time of the day months, weeks, and days before the match to be evaluated by the VADA or USADA on Pacquiao and Mayweather’ case.

The Olympic-type drug test will be administered unannounced in-and-out of competition blood and/or urine tests at any point through fight night, May 2, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas according to the LA Times report. USADA will use the advanced Carbon Isotope Ratio process in testing for synthetic testosterone while also testing for the energy-boosting EPO and strength-building human growth hormone.

Anyone found violating it would be facing a severe consequence on their career according to USADA Chief Executive Travis Tygard. Suspension would be four years out of professional sanctioned boxing commissions.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)