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<\/p>\nThe fiscal year 2025 budget proposed by the Office of the Governor sets aside $800,000 for the Health Network Program (formerly known as the medical referral program) headed by the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.<\/p>\n
According to the budget proposal submitted by the Office of the Governor to the Legislature, the Office of the Governor is proposing a $800,000 allocation for the HNP program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis budget proposal allocates $800,000 of the total $6.5 million requested by CHCC for the operations and activities of the Health Network Program to defray the cost of medical care not available in the Commonwealth,\u201d said the governor\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n
However, based on CHCC\u2019s previous projected expenditure for HNP for FY24, an allocation of $800,000 may not suffice.<\/p>\n
CHCC chief executive officer Esther L. Mu\u00f1a recently submitted a letter to House Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) requesting funding for the HNP program.<\/p>\n
Public Law 22-33, which returned the HNP program to CHCC, allows the corporation to submit a funding request to the governor and the Legislature if the appropriated funding has been exhausted prior to the end of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n
In this case, not only was the appropriated funding insufficient, CHCC had to put up its own funds to keep the program going.<\/p>\n
In her letter to Villagomez, Mu\u00f1a said as of March 31, 2024, the year-to-date expenditures for the program amounted to $2.3 million.<\/p>\n
Muna, in her letter notes that of the $797,711 that the FY 2024 budget law appropriated to HNP, only $655,470 has been transferred.<\/p>\n
According to Mu\u00f1a, based on CHCC\u2019s annualized expenditures, the total projected expenditure for HNP for FY 2024 is expected to be around $4.6 million.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a said to ensure the smooth continuation of the program, CHCC has already advanced $1.6 million of its own funds to augment the funding shortfall for HNP.<\/p>\n
CHCC asked the Legislature for an additional funding of $3.8 million to sustain the activities of the HNP and to return CHCC\u2019s funds to its own coffers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Esther Lizama Mu\u00f1a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The fiscal year 2025 budget proposed by the Office of the Governor sets aside $800,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410197","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}