fredfam1

Sorry, I have to disagree with your negative over Hillary but I has to respect your choice. I am not here to influence your decision. Accord your post, that you paid $300 for take your daughter to emergency room... Hillary will make sure that you won´t pay other $300.00 or more for take your daughter to emergency room for next time... At German health system, we don´t pay like that... I only paid €10 at quarterly for visit emergencies and doctor appointments, no matter how often I visit in quarterly and pay medicine, cream, etc between €5 and €10 - depend the prices of medicines... Healthcare pay around 90% of worth medicines, cream. Rest, we paid €5 to €10.

Next time, please search correct information and make question instead of make a false assumption.

The people I have personally spoken to lived here leagelly from Germany, Romania, and Mexico. Well another European country but I cant remember
where. Anyway we can forget about Mexico in this debat. They don't
do much for their people at all. The one good thing I did hear about
Romanian surgons was they are highly skilled, but it took my friend
Carmen 6 months to get a hysterectomy because of a waiting list.
Now I admit to having used old research, and when I just did a search,
(Maybe you can help me) I googled, "Health Care Access Germany" and
other variations of this. What comes up on my screen is UK, Canada, China
(none of which I typed in!) except this one article on health care access for
the poor Germans.

t. Ignatius Medical Clinic: Making Health Care Affordable for the Poor
Mike Banos


Mike Banos is a free-lance journalist who contributes an opinion column "Hammer and Anvil" to the Mindanao Gold Star Daily newspaper Mondays and Fridays. He is a member of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club, Inc. Board of Directors and has been a journalist for over 20 years in the cities of Zamboanga and Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. He is the content provider for Kagay-an.com, Online News from Cagayan de Oro.

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Mike Banos
November 8, 2007

Cagayan de Oro City – While serving the rural barangays for the City Health Department as Medical Officer in the early nineties, Dr. Meneleo "Loloi" R. Navarro was struck by the extreme poverty of most people in the area who couldn't even afford basic medical care.

"When we gave them a prescription for their ailments they would just look at us and ask 'What shall we do with this?' recalls Dr. Navarro. "We realized that people who didn't even earn enough to eat couldn't possible have any money to buy medicines when they got sick."

Together with his schoolmates from the Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan High School: Drs. Erickson San Juan, Raoul dela Serna, Aaron Oliveros and Victor Orencia, Dr. Navarro established the St. Ignatius Medical Clinic for the poor at a makeshift clinic below a private residence at 8th St., Nazareth in 1991.

When they started, the group only charged a medical consultation fee of P25 with medicines provided free of charge through the Committee of German Doctors under Peter Metzger, medical director.

"We want to make it affordable so the price does not become a barrier to consultation," Dr. dela Serna said. "However, although we could have provided our services for free, we made it a point to charge a minimum consultation fee because we wanted people to value their own health by giving it the dignity it deserves. Of course in extreme cases, we even waived that for patients who couldn't even afford that minimal amount."

Initially, even Mr. Metzger himself was skeptical of the project, but when he saw for himself the doctors dedication and the number of patients flocking to the clinic, he not only provided free medicines but even gave Dr. Navarro free use of his 4X4 vehicle when the latter went up to the rural areas to serve patients who couldn't afford the fare to go downtown.

Since they only had a few patients at the start, they only had Dr. de la Serna as full time resident doctor while the rest reported part-time depending on the need for their services.

In no time at all, the little clinic was serving 150-200 patients a day.

However, even at that early stage, the founders already realized they had to break free of their dependence on the German Doctors if they wanted their clinic to sustain itself in the long run. In 1993, the group registered the St. Ignatius Health Foundation, Inc. (SIHFI) with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a non-stock, non-profit foundation.

From the start, the group only sourced its funds from its patients, and dug into personal pockets when funds ran short, which was often. Furniture and appliances for the clinic were personal items made available for its use by the founders.

Their efforts did not go unnoticed. During its March 2002 commencement exercises, Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan (XU-AdC) cited SIHFI as its first awardee for the Fr. William Masterson Award for Community Service. Barely a year later, the Committee of German Doctors stopped providing the clinic with free medicines. What looked at first to be the end of the project in fact turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

By accident (or Divine Intervention, depending on how you see it), Dr. Navarro found the present site of the clinic at the Pelaez Sports Center. The 120 sq.m. space provided space for a receiving area, and two consultation rooms for pediatrics and surgery.

Again, Divine Intervention came along and made a nearby space available for the St. Ignatius Medical Clinic Pharmacy which was established in March 8, 2006 to sell essential medicines to indigent patients at a price they could afford. Evie Taylor, its cashier, retired from her job in Australia and came home to head the new enterprise.

"We surveyed the local costs of medicines and we were able to lower the prices of most medicines by making just enough margin to cover operations and overhead," Dr. Navarro said. "We were assisted in our endeavor by the BIR which gave us a Certificate of Tax Exemption. Whatever income the pharmacy generated was plowed back to finance the medical clinic and the Maternal and Child Care (Birthing Home) which began operations in March 18, 2007."

"We want to give the best service we can at least cost to the patient," Dr. dela Serna said.

But the situation then was far from ideal.

"We thought the health woes of our patients were properly addressed with the cheap medicines offered by our pharmacy and the token P80 consultation fee," Dr. Navarro said. "However, we realized that diagnostic exams needed to confirm our physical diagnosis were still beyond the reach of our patients."

This posed a big problem for the trustees because of the big amount of money need to run a clinical laboratory. Armed only with hope and trust that anything good done will bring graces from above, the trustees persuaded their creditors to grant them liberal payment schemes for expensive laboratory equipment.

On May 18, 2007, the St. Ignatius Diagnostic Center became operational, still situated in the Pelaez Sport Center. A spot sampling of their prices reveals the clinic remains true to its word to make health care affordable for the poor. Urinalysis and fecalysis only cost P30.00, even cheaper than some government hospitals. Package rates for CBC and Urinalysis or CBC/fecalysis are also available for only P100.00

What does the future hold for the intrepid band of doctors who dared buck the trend of their fellow medical practitioners seeking greener pastures abroad or charging expensive rates for their services?

"We named our clinic after St. Ignatius, the patron saint of the Ateneo, where we all come from," Dr. Navarro. "We are men and women for others who subscribe to the Jesuit creed "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam" (For the Greater Glory of God). This is our past, our present and hopefully with God's grace, it would also be our future."