NO wonder, most doctors get rich quick (note that we said most, since a vanishing few of them still believe in ‘humanitarian’ medical charges)  because  they bill astronomically and bleed patients mercilessly. More so, if they are a couple – husband and wife—engaged in allied fields of medicine, each complementing the other in terms of patient referrals.

Sometimes, if we were a socialist state, we wish they’ll ban couples from engaging in the same profession especially, medicine. You know what we mean, of course: The poor   patient becomes a milking cow in the hands of both, with neither hardly being   cooperative or attentive to a particular patient’s needs if he doesn’t “patronize” the other.

Now, when did health care become a buy one-take one affair?  Read more

IF there’s still any doubt that retail business is the “in” thing in the economy today, the rise of so many commercial malls even in Dagupan’s urban jungle should dispel it. Nepo Mall, Magic, CSI, they’re all here in our neck of the woods. Soon, even the giant SM or even Shopwise which has taken over much of the pioneering Rustan’s Department Store, could be in the city too.

Even St. Joseph Drugstore has become a chain pharmacy company almost overnight, opening several store branches all over the city like there was no tomorrow. No doubt, as corporate and market think-tanks say it, the retail sector in the Philippines today has never been as vibrant.

This trend however, it seems, only validates the common perception of many analysts, both foreign and domestic, that Pinoys may really be only good at retailing but shy away (dread) going into manufacturing. Read more

CHEAP labor in the Philippines and other developing countries is fueling all those outsourcing ventures and call centers, everyone knows that by now. So many young Pinoy adults, even the fresh-out-of-college, and even some undergrads, are pursuing the dream for a seat at some call center or the other since two years back like it were the Golden Fleece itself. 
Few, if any, of these aspirants mind if, as economists and other labor analysts often say, they are actually gettting a relatively (by international hiring rate standards) lower pay than their call center counterparts in the United States, UK or even Hongkong. Dollar is a dollar is a dollar,no matter how the total pay compares lowly with that paid in the same currency to  others. What they’d do– twist their native

tongue this way and that just to get the perfect American slang or the English tight upper lip inflection and nasal twang right over the phone — to land a job as CC hiree.  Read more

I just had to write this one.

Last night, I watched silently enthralled inside a restaurant (not one of those swanky, fancy dining places but an ordinary but popular one in the city) as a typical laborer’s family ( no offense meant really now, but  it was quite obvious from the outward appearance of the characters) gorged, literally gorged, on the food at a table. No pretenses, no conscious table manner observance, no frills in their dining-out clothes — but definitely with money to burn. For the food ordered, at least. 

I was watching, I mused, one of thousands of poor Pinoy families eking out a living in a nation now flapping its wings at having achieved for the first quarter of the year a 5.5 Gross National Product (GNP), up from something lower for the same period last year, or so the NEDA says. Read more

GOOD news for the tobacco industry: A French paper manufacturer is keenly interested in buying tobacco pulp from the Philippines to sustain its annual requirements for paper-making.

No less than National Tobacco Administrator Carlitos S. Encarnacion made the announcement. Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc., a paper company based in Quimperle, France is negotiating for importation of tobacco pulp from Manila after their sample tests showed that NTA’s tobacco pulp is of good quality.

NTA has been producing pulp from tobacco stalks as main component in its research and development program on other uses of the tobaco pulp. Now it seems its modest efforts have paid off and Philippine tobacco has been noticed — definitely a ray of sunshine once again on what some have labelled (because of the scientific warnings on health risks in smoking) a sunset industry.

With the French buying our tobacco pulp, more jobs and investment oportunities are there for the grabbing. Here’s hoping the deal is a done one. Schweitze-Mauduit is known as a “diversified producer of premium specialty paper” and is also among the world’s largest supplier of fine paper.  

RATHER quite late for Valentine’s but certainly not for this Season of Love and Sacrifice, we lifted this one from a post at a site we (pardon us dear blogger, please holler if you read this piece of yours here to be acknowledged) failed to mark.

So simply written, so greaty conveyed was the message. we thought we’d share you this one — maybe not consumer issue-related but just to ponder on as we go thru life. The blogger is some kind of doctor.

It was a busy morning, approximately 8.30am, when an elderly gentleman, in his 80’s, arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9am. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On examination, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redressed his wound. Read more

YOU are either an hermit living in the urban jungle or totally sightless not to notice the mushrooming of various second-hand or surplus computer stores in many parts of the country today. 

Mostly owned or operated by Koreans, Indians and some Chinese, the presence of these ”surplus stores”  shows the big glut in computer production worldwide, such that actual marketing has reached the dime-a-dozen point. Why, in these retail outlets, a Pentium 3 fetches for just P11-thou or P12-thou — really a clear bargain!

This is a development that should, barring some legal issues on  licensing and distribution, prove a boon to the country’s  aspirations for  higher computer literacy among its young people.

Read more

NEIGHBOR blogger Simon wonders about the striking disparity in service and charges between fancy restaurants such as a noted one in Tarlac and the hole-in-the-wall beerhouses of Metro Manila.

With the first, you wait interminably for your order and get billed stratospherically when you pay; with the latter, you are treated like a king from your first step inside their unassuming interiors and pay only the most reasonable of charges — with discounts to boot!

Makes you want to come back again and again, Simon says.

Read more

FILIPINOS long reeling from the bloatedand runaway prizes of medicine in the country should stand up and be heard (and counted) today on the scandalously high cost of healthcare here.  

There should now be a serious and sustained effort among all of us low and middle-income Pinoys to :
1.      Fight the brazen attempt of the  influential Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) and their lobbyists to kill in the water  Senate Bill No. 2139 that aims to lower drug prices  by amending the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines, which Code has  become, in a manner of speaking, the refuge of scoundrels; and , Read more

TWO guys wandered into my office which I opened on a Sunday with a distraught expression on their faces.They asked where they could find the Bureau of Food and Drugs Administration(BFAD) office which was (I learned only belatedly) in the same building we were.

I told them it was a Sunday and it was unlikely that they’d find someone holding office at the BFAD even if it were located anywhere near my office.

One of the guys told me they were from barangay (village) Mermer in Manaoag town and (looking quite both disappointed and desperate) were going to report a seeming food poisoning incident to the BFAD so it can send representatives over and check the source or provider of the food. My newsman’s instinct aroused, I tried to pry the duo Read more