Bring our elderly and disabled home

While President Aquino is focusing on perking up the Philippine economy, an opportunity with huge economic potentials is being overlooked. This opportunity could be a good topic for discussion with US President Barack Obama come June 2012, when Mr. Aquino goes on a state visit to the United States.

There are around 400,000 elderly (65 years old and above) and disabled Filipino-Americans and Filipino citizens living in United States. For most of their lives, they shared a substantial chunk of their earnings with the families and relatives they left behind in the Philippines. Most of them now want to come back and retire. But they won’t.

Not while US Medicare does not cover health services extended to its members outside the United States. US Medicare should. Because doing so will benefit both the Philippines and the United States. How?

1) Here in the Philippines, these elderly and disabled Fil-Ams and Filipinos will each spend around $150 per month for medical care. All in all, that would be around $720 million a year for Philippine hospitals. For its part, US Medicare could save up to around $2 billion a year. This, too, should also help decongest Guam’s one and only civilian hospital.

2) With their average pension of $1,000, they will contribute a total of about $4.8 billion annually to the Philippine economy—which is peanuts for the US economy.

In other words, this project will promote medical tourism in the Philippines, translate into more dollars for our country, and make our economy more robust. And as the years go by, more and more of our kababayans will be coming home.

The arrangement could be expanded to cover all Filipinos and those with Filipino ancestry who are living in Canada, Australia and Europe or, for that matter, elsewhere in the world. Imagine the great potentials this undertaking can realize for our country, even as it will provide great relief for our elderly and disabled kin who are now living lonely lives abroad. What better gift or favor can we bestow them, our modern-day heroes, in their twilight years?

President Aquino should not be fazed by US medical professionals and politicians who are too concerned with the outflow of US dollars from their country, but overlook the moral, human and Christian dimensions of this issue. Our kababayans had given the best years of their lives in the service of their host country. Now, old and disabled, they justly deserve to be where they want and where they think they will be most comfortable. Their hearts are crying: “Let our tired bodies find rest in the warm bosom of the motherland we greatly missed for so many decades!”

No president has ever seriously pursued this project. If Mr. Aquino successfully achieves this, then his presidency shall have found a crowning glory.

Bring them home, Mr. President.

—P.  DUQUE,

chair,

Medicare Advocacy Council,

Guam, [email protected]