Senate President Joaquin G. Adriano said that four senators are currently in Manila for \u201ca fact-finding mission\u201d in connection with the proposed liaison office in that country.<\/p>\n
Adriano said that the mission was originally scheduled over a year ago but was aborted when four CNMI citizens were arrested in Manila.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were strong objections so that plan was shelved. We had that incident [the arrests] then,\u201d said the senator.<\/p>\n
He said that Senate Health Committee chair Sen. Henry San Nicolas and senators Joseph Mendiola and Luis Crisostimo left for Manila last Tuesday. On Thursday, Sen. Thomas Villagomez followed the three, he added.<\/p>\n
Adriano said the four senators are expected to return on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are only two direct flights to and from Manila: Tuesday and Thursday. They\u2019ll be back on Tuesday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Adriano said that the trip is \u201cpurely to find out if it\u2019s feasible to open Manila liaison office\u201d as proposed by a House-approved bill authored by Rota Rep. Crispin Ogo.<\/p>\n
Meantime, Adriano said that he does not support the idea of just putting up a liaison office for Rota and Tinian patients.<\/p>\n
Mendiola earlier said that the Senate may favor just having a Tinian and Rota liaison office if Saipan lawmakers would not support it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not really right. We can\u2019t discriminate against patients,\u201d said the senator.<\/p>\n
He said the real issue that must be dealt with is the fact that most CNMI patients are Medicaid and Medicare members, which means that their federally funded insurance would not be accepted in Manila hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we must listen to the Department of Public Health,\u201d he said, noting that the Senate is inclined to call DPH officials to speak up on the proposed liaison office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we open an office, we better make sure that our patients get treated in Manila hospitals. That\u2019s my real concern,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The CNMI used to run a liaison office in Manila, attending to medical referral patients as well as to CNMI-bound workers. The office reportedly spent some $500,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Recently, senators said that Guam pays an agent to attend to its referral patients in Manila at a cost of about $100,000 a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate President Joaquin G. Adriano said that four senators are currently in Manila for \u201ca fact-finding mission\u201d in connection with the proposed liaison office in that country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90235","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\/90235","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=90235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}