More than Emergency Powers, Strong Political Will Needed to Disinfect PhilHealth

More at: https://pinglacson.net/2020/09/04/more-than-emergency-powers-strong-political-will-needed-to-disinfect-philhealth/

More than "emergency powers" to reorganize PhilHealth, what the President needs is real, honest-to-goodness, strong political will first.

Since PhilHealth is a creation of a law passed by Congress, the President has no statutory power to reorganize the agency, so he actually needs an act of Congress to delegate to him such power or authority.

And if the President's intention is to cleanse PhilHealth of scalawags and misfits, he may not need that delegated authority anymore as he has the Philippine National Police, National Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice and other instrumentalities of government at his disposal.

That said, there is no time to lose to exercise such political will: No matter how good our country's economic managers are, if our health department is below the level of incompetence in the middle of this pandemic, we will all sink before we can even start to swim.

For a start, he can fire its ex-officio chairman and replace him with someone even with little above-average leadership traits, competence, honesty and integrity - and who won't wash his hands but takes full responsibility for what PhilHealth does or fails to do.