MOST people will not be averse to a privately run hospital and that’s what the polls show. But the question that should be asked is what will GMH look like with a private hospital that has “everything going for it”? When GMH is the only hospital now and it is severely underfunded and undermanned! (The latest P.R. news out of GMH is a media blitz by the administration to make the case for a privately run hospital to show the community that it is “not that bad” at GMH.)
It is like asking people if they would like to see privately run schools besides GPSS. Of course there is a market for it when the better-off and little-but-better-off folks will send their kids there as they perceive it to be safer, cleaner, and therefore a better end product, i.e., their children, will emerge. And what is the state of GPSS now?
Keep in mind that there is a vast underclass on Guam, some local, some new immigrants from the outer islands. You can look at the kids that emerge from the buses in any village and you can immediately see that they are many of our Micronesian brothers and sisters kids. (Don’t you think more will come with the “Every Child is ENTITLED to An Adequate Education Act” set to take effect a few months away?) While most of their parents are working, they do so, like many of their counterparts, in low-paying jobs and therefore pay little to no taxes. At the same time if you go to DPHSS you will see at the welfare line, a good number of Micronesian (and others as well) women living up to get benefits. This is the anecdotal experience Chamorros and others see (especially poorer folks) and it creates angst in the community as Ben Meno articulates on Newstalk K-57. It might be time to do another study to see the societal impact cost after 20 years of the Compact of Free Association that was passed in ’86. Interior has funded the first of several when they funneled money to the Bureau of Planning which subcontracted the university and those studies are still there in the archives. The chief investigator was Dr. Kyle Smith who is still with UOG.
Is our current hospital going to be like an inner-city hospital in the states, neglected even more so (and eventually shut down) like what GPSS looks now?

MATT PHILIPS
Mangilao, Guam