WHAT IS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE?

WHAT IS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE? What is universal health care, and what makes it universal? Is it the fact that it is accessible everywhere? Or is it the fact that it should be available to everyone, regardless of who they are, and where they are? I believe that it should be the latter, and that is the reason why I also believe that we should refer to it as “universal access to healthcare” instead. In theory, there is really no such thing as “universal healthcare”, in the sense that healthcare is available to everyone, everywhere at no cost to them. It seems that not a single country has done that, even if Canada and some Scandinavian countries seem to be close to doing it. Here in the Philippines, it seems that the best we could do for now is to give “access” to everyone, even if there are certain costs to them. In his own way, Dr. Luis Ramon V. Rodriguez has found a way to give make healthcare more accessible to more Filipinos, and to make it more affordable to them. Using new Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics (AIDA), technologies, he is now able to lower the costs of medical tests and procedures. And to make more medical devices available to more doctors, he is now offering rent-to-own (RTO) plans and pay-per-use (PPU) plans. These plans are now available nationwide. IKE SENERES/06-10-2024