manong

i admire these hospitals that understand the financial problem of the patients and their relatives, especially if they were private institution. i still respect the right of the private institutions/hospitals/doctors to be paid for their services. however, i donot agree in imposing additional burdens if ever the patient or their relatives cannot pay immediately due to financial constraints, moreso adding surcharges on financial assistance like what UST did. maybe i was disillusioned thinking that this institution, being a religious one would be more humane and understanding. hope that lawmakers would also realize this situation and make a bill not to add interest on promisory notes and stop surcharges on financial assistance.

yes, i agree, RA9439 is not a detention law afterall. indirectly, a patient can be detained due to non-payment of bills. Just like what happened to us at UST hospital. Since our bill reached to more than 400k, we tried to ask if we could at least present a promisory note. We were given a list of requirements stating to settle first at least 75% of the hospital bill, a letter how we are going to pay the hospital, post dated checks or Transfer Certificate of Title. we were asked to come back when the requirements are complete. With this requirements, specially the 75% payment of hospital bill will indirectly detain the patient while the family is trying to complete it. What is worse is when we tried to negotiate, they put 1% interest per month on top of the bill and a surcharge of 2k per 50k financial help from PCSO. An interest of 48k for 1 year to pay and a surcharge of 2k means an additional of 50k on top of the hospital bill. They just took away from us the 50K financial assistance from PCSO. in the end, we did not benefited from the financial assistance because of those interest and surcharge and it did not helped us in our financial problem. i hope that they would make a law to put a stop on interest on hospital bill whenever the patient or relative will settle with an easy payment plan. In the first place, with the amount on hospital bill, i'm sure there is already a marked-up value to the supplies and service cost, in short they already have profits on the hospital bills and it is not humanitarian to add an additional cost to people or patients with financial problems. If there is a bill putting a stop to additional charges aside from the interest when credit cards are used for purchase, i believe for humanitarian reason a law can also be passed not to put interest on promisory note and surcharges from financial assistance.