MANILA, Philippines—A health expert slammed the Department of Health (DOH) for its pronouncements that drunk and helmetless drivers would be excluded from the department’s zero balance billing (ZBB) should they get into an accident.
In a Facebook post entitled “Universal healthcare should be universal,” on Saturday, Dr. Tony Leachon said in Filipino that it was “the responsibility of the state to provide medication not to judge.”
He said that a bloodied patient should not be proven innocent before he or she was treated.
He added that this rule violated due process, where the poor were punished, and hospitals were turned into courts.
Stil in Filipino, Leachon said “this undermined the foundation of Universal Health Care (UHC), which should never be conditional or punitive.”
Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said on Friday that those who would be admitted for not wearing helmets, not wearing seatbelts or drunk would be disqualified from the zero balance billing.
The DOH reported that 13,000 road crashes were recorded annually, and those aged 5 to 29 made up the most of that number.
