Health Workers Rage at Cuts

📷: Alliance of Health Workers / FB

The Health Workers Party-List slammed the Marcos Jr administration’s proposed ₱7.2-trillion 2027 national budget, warning that deep cuts to public hospitals and health programs will cripple already congested facilities while billions remain earmarked for pork barrel-like allocations and flood control projects prone to corruption.

Key Cuts in Health Services

– Quirino Memorial Medical Center: ₱511.25M slashed (31%)

– National Center for Mental Health: ₱311.49M cut (20%)

– Research Institute for Tropical Medicine: ₱168.17M cut (28%)

– Philippine General Hospital: down from ₱8.1B (2026) to ₱7.3B (2027)

Specialty hospitals — Lung Center, National Kidney Institute, Children’s Medical Center, and Heart Center — face subsidy reductions of 29–57%.

Public Health Programs Slashed

– Disease Prevention & Control: -₱180.8M

– Health Emergency Preparedness: -₱563.8M

– Family Health, Immunization, Nutrition: -₱1.14B

– Family Planning & Reproductive Health: -₱85.7M

– Communicable Disease Control: -₱826.7M

The group stressed that while health budgets shrink, ₱58.5B will be funneled into Financial Assistance to LGUs, NTF-ELCAC Barangay Development, Growth Equity Fund, and other lump-sum allocations. Critics warn these funds, distributed via DBM “scorecards,” mirror pork barrel practices and risk misuse — echoing past ghost flood control projects and non-functional “super health centers.”

“Public hospitals are already overcrowded, patients wait months for treatment, and now government wants to cut lifelines while expanding pork,” the group declared.

They vowed continued resistance against budget cuts, corruption, and pork barrel politics, demanding free, quality national health services for the Filipino people. # (ZIA LUNA)