RECENTLY Governor Babauta made a significant statement about his “dream” of Saipan being the location for a regional children’s hospital. I think it is a wonderful dream and I urge him not to let go of it or let others tell him that “we can’t do that.” It can be done.
However, I think it should be part of a far broader plan that essentially turns the CNMI into a showcase of modernized, high-tech, socialized medical care, with doctors and nurses earning the most. Am I a communist? No. What I am for is inclusion—inclusion of everyone who lives here in some sort of health insurance program at reasonable premiums. In other words, we are all “covered” and everyone—government employees, private sector employers and employees and non-resident workers–-pays in each and every month.
When it comes to health insurance, no one is luckier than CNMI government employees. Over 90 percent of the registered voters in the CNMI are covered by health insurance and most work for or are retired from the government. Because of this, most of our leaders are not knowledgeable about the high cost of health insurance for everyone else and the fact that many people living here are not covered at all by insurance and have no way of paying the Commonwealth Health Center for medical treatment when they are injured or get sick. These people should be included under the government health insurance plan because by leaving them out, they are ultimately treated for free and the taxpayers foot the bill.
I look at the CNMI as being a large health maintenance organization. The infrastructure, consisting of the health center itself, doctors, nurses, technical staff, equipment and medical supplies, is already in place. If everyone is covered and everyone pays a reasonable premium per month, there is no reason why we would not have the funds for a first class health care system to take care of a small population of under 80,000 people, many of whom do not require any medical care at all. Preventive medicine could be practiced a lot more and a lot better than is being done right now.
There is no reason why we can’t have the equipment and surgical setups for visiting specialists such as urologists and cardiologists to bring their staffs and perform surgeries here, thereby saving the government the huge cost of off-island referrals. There is no reason why we can’t be associated with qualified stateside teaching hospitals so medical residencies could be performed at CHC. There is no reason why visiting specialists, such as dermatologists, can’t come here more than once or twice every five or six years.
One thing we could do almost right away is build on the extremely capable eye care specialists we already have here and also make Saipan a regional center for the treatment and care of eye problems, especially those associated with diabetic retinopathy and the prevention of glaucoma.
Governor Babauta worked as a health planner in the mid-1980s and has had the HMO idea for along time. So have I, but there was no sense in even suggesting it during our last three administrations. Now is the time to get it going. In order to accomplish this task, some radical steps must be taken and the most radical is to take health insurance responsibilities away from the Retirement Fund and put it in the hands of professionals who can visualize the CNMI as being a good-sized HMO covering everyone.
We have the ability to create something new and unique, suitable for the people of the CNMI, Guam, Palau and the FSM. I hope it turns out to be more than just a dream.KENNETH L. GOVENDO
Dandan, Saipan
