Edgardo J. Angara
WHILE serving as Chairman of the Senate Health Committee in the late eighties, I realized there was something terribly wrong with our health care delivery. Too many people have no access to ready health care. So I proceeded to inquire into it and discovered, to my dismay, that no one except a few economists in some universities and even fewer experts in public health, had studied the matter more than cursorily.
Eventually, I was referred to two professors from the Harvard School of Public Health, both experts on health insurance. They stayed here and helped my local team of experts put together the law that created what we now know as PHILHEALTH.
That to me illustrates the serious hurdles our policymakers encounter when making key policies and decisions: Lack of available policy studies.
Today it is easier to access relevant policy studies abroad through the internet, and discover the best practices from different countries. But the same is not true in our own country. There is a huge void and weakness in our policymaking simply because there are not enough studies to support Congress and other policymakers in making relevant, strategic policies and decisions.
I have been in policymaking positions for over two and a half decades, and always I’ve been plagued by the paucity of facts, figures, and insights to buttress my policy initiatives except what I can generate out of my own efforts.
We badly need both research for the long haul, and ones that are immediately usable and practicable. Policy studies must serve both the long-term and immediate needs of policymakers for better and enlightened public policies and decisions.
Email: edgardo_angara@hotmail.com
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