The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. announced Saturday a hike in PRC testing\u00a0costs to outbound travelers from $50 to\u00a0$300.\u00a0 As flights return, this decision will\u00a0handcuff families\u00a0to the island.\u00a0 Many have\u00a0been without work for months and will struggle to pay for a ticket, no less an additional\u00a0$300 per family member if they need to travel to the Philippines, Korea, China, or Japan where PRC tests are required for entry.\u00a0 So a family of\u00a0four traveling to\u00a0Manila will have to come up with an\u00a0additional $1,200. Is that fair?\u00a0 What if someone needs surgery in\u00a0Manila or somewhere else that provides a service that can\u2019t be found in the CNMI?\u00a0 Would CNMI charge a person with an urgent need $300 if they needed to travel to the Philippines for medical care?<\/p>\n
Tourists will not return.\u00a0 Will tourists from\u00a0China,\u00a0Korea, Japan, and the\u00a0Philippines return to Saipan knowing they\u2019ll pay $300 per family member to return back home?\u00a0 If I\u2019m vacation planning, $50 for each family member sounds much better than $300.\u00a0\u00a0CHCC can all but guarantee no tourist will return to the CNMI.\u00a0 Great job!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Who paid for the test?\u00a0 Did CHCC pay for all\u00a0the PRC kits sent to the CNMI?\u00a0 I thought they were being reimbursed or have already been reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.\u00a0 Who pays for health care worker and laboratory costs associated with pandemic testing?\u00a0 I thought FEMA was reimbursing CHCC for these costs.\u00a0\u00a0So if CHCC is being reimbursed by\u00a0FEMA for these costs, should CHCC profit for services that they have already been paid for or will be reimbursed for?\u00a0 Seems like if the federal\u00a0government is already covering these costs, charging someone else for them would be illegal.\u00a0 Should CHCC be paying FEMA back for the cost of kits being used on nonresidents or tourists?\u00a0 I guess the $50 PRC cost wasn\u2019t enough to cover the utility bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mica F. Cochran\u00a0<\/strong> The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. announced Saturday a hike in PRC testing\u00a0costs to outbound travelers from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":321679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[182,26],"class_list":["post-329763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-capital-hill","tag-cnmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCapital Hill, Saipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"