Nov. 14, 2017 (Hagåtña) — About 40,000 people receive healthcare at the Guam Memorial Hospital each year. And 365 days a year, the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians, staff and other GMH professionals invest their best effort, their sweat, and their time into providing the best possible healthcare for the people of Guam.
We cannot do any less in our support of their life-saving work.
Submitted on July 10, 2017, Bills 141-34 and 142-34 still sit on Speaker BJ Cruz’s figurative bookshelf collecting dust, because he has not scheduled a public hearing for the bills.
“Your inaction to schedule a public hearing on these bills indicates a lack of support for GMH’s effort to improve the services it provides Guamanians, or even, a willingness to allow GMH the opportunity to share their plan with your fellow senators and the people of Guam in a legislative public hearing,” Governor Calvo stated.
“Further, the lack of action is contrary to your willingness to support bi-partisan efforts to shore up our people’s health and safety infrastructure. This leaves me questioning your true motives because it appears that health and welfare are not your top priorities – but rather, politics are. I hope this is not the case, and perhaps, a renewed request for a public hearing would be the motivator you need to allow for one on these two bills.”
Democrat Senator Dennis Rodriguez’s bill that Governor Calvo signed into law last week, illustrates how we can work together to bring solutions to problems that handicap our healthcare system. Similarly, the earlier legislation that provides $50 million in road repairs is an investment into the infrastructure of our island that will help promote the safety and health of our people — it will save lives.
As a community, we cannot do any less in our support of Guam Memorial Hospital. Anna Pangelinan, a member of the Guam Memorial Hospital Volunteer Association, was one of the people who has asked when the public hearings will be held.
“The hospital is our hospital (and) we need the public to come to the hearing when it is scheduled to give their support for these two bills,” she said referring to Bills 141 & 142. “Please call our senators and give your support so these two bills can go through.”
Former Lt. Governor Dr. Mike Cruz, who helped GMH gain accreditation in the face of many critics, said modernizing GMH is good for our island.
“(GMH) needs a dedicated source of funding to ensure it can meet the mandate of seeing every patient that arrives at its doorstep. GMH is going to need to modernize. It’s an old facility … and that ultimately affects the ability to give care, good care,” Dr. Mike Cruz stated in a video on GMH (Watch: Former Lt. Gov. Dr. Mike Cruz on the GMH Modernization Plan) on GMH.
“This is our hospital that is going to be here, where a majority of our people were born at and it needs help. We need a modernization of GMH because it really, truly is a modernization of healthcare as a whole. So I think we should endorse and look at the Governor’s plan for modernization and his plan for healthcare and address it. Otherwise, what are your options? If there are no options at all then we suffer as a people.”
Governor Calvo sent a letter to Speaker Cruz, asking again that the Legislature hold a public hearing for Bills 141 and 142: “It is up to us, the elected leaders of the island, to do the work and provide solutions.”
