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.
EXPANDING NAT’L COLD CHAIN NETWORK
Somehow, there appears to be a cold chain network here and there, but it does not appear to be extensive enough to meet the needs of the logistics industry that is servicing the food and drugs sectors.
Contrary to the common belief that the cold chain is only for the food sector, it is also needed by the drugs sector.
My idea of a National Cold Chain Network (NCCN) is like that of the Internet, which is a “network of networks”, meaning that it is an aggregate network of many subsidiary networks. That is the reason why in theory, the internet could not be destroyed as a whole, or it could not totally malfunction, because many of its parts will still function, even if some of its parts are already disabled.
Jorge Malig is a businessman who builds cold storage warehouses using container vans and prefabricated materials. He uses a blast-in-freeze (BIF) technology that was developed by the late Filipino genius inventor Hernando B. Decena. As fresh foods are blast frozen in the warehouse, these are kept fresh as these are transported in reefer vans also built by Mr. Malig.
I believe that all local government units should have their own cold storage warehouses that should use the BIF method.
The good news is, there are already many reefer vans that could be integrated to form an expanded NCCN./PN
