Bill to fund help Rota patients advances

More funding for Rota interisland medical referral patients and subsistence allowance for hemodialysis and terminally-ill patients took a step forward as legislators moved to pass House Bill 21-116 last Monday.

Manglona

The bill is a move from Rep. Donald M. Manglona (Ind-Rota) to transfer, for Rota patients, $290,000 of the funding appropriated to Rota to pay any of their legislative delegation’s outstanding obligation to the general fund, from the sixth-year casino license fee, as mandated under Public Law 21-10.

Under the law, the appropriation shall only be obligated upon the Finance secretary’s certification to the Rota delegation, indicating a detail accounting of the obligation, if there is, of any amount owed or not owed by the legislators.

According to Manglona, the Rota delegation has been going back and forth with the Department of Finance, regarding what is owed, if any, by the First Senatorial District funds. “Since October, when this bill became law, we haven’t received any certification or any letter from Finance stating that these funds were used to pay any balance,” he added.

The Rota delegation finds that during this “critical financial shortfall,” it is crucial to provide for the Rota interisland medical referral patients’ stipend and lodging costs, as well as the Rota hemodialysis and terminally-ill patients’ medical subsistence allowance.

Without money coming in from funding sources that would normally cover medical expenses of Rota patients, the delegation is seeking to use the $290,000 to support Rota’s interisland medical referral patients, and hemodialysis and terminally-ill patients.

“Patients from the CNMI, when they seek health care outside the CNMI, they get some kind of stipend and…these expenses are taken care of. But with Rota, it’s the delegation’s responsibility to try to ensure that some of these expenses are covered,” Manglona said. “We’ve assisted [the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.] with these expenses by appropriating some of our local funding but, again, absent any poker fees or any e-gaming fees, we’re trying to look for other revenue sources to help support these programs. This bill will take care of that.”

H.B. 21-116 will re-appropriate the $290,000 to provide for the interisland medical referral stipend and lodging costs and the medical subsistence allowance for the Rota patients.

A total of $190,000 will be used to cover the payment of the Rota patients’ medical referral stipend and lodging costs, and $100,000 will cover the payment of the Rota medical subsistence allowance for the Rota hemodialysis and terminally-ill patients.

As a background, Public Law 21-10 also appropriated $220,000 for about 140 Rota dialysis and terminally ill patients’ monthly subsistence allowance from May to October 2019.

At the House session, Rep. Tina Sablan (D-Saipan) stressed the need to get better information from the Finance secretary, citing that there “seems to be some confusion coming from the administration about what is owed or is not owed.”

“We really need to get better information from the Secretary of Finance. I think that, going forward, I don’t understand how the people [on] Rota and the Rota delegation were placed in such [a] situation to begin with. Perhaps that is something that we could further clarify, to make sure that this really doesn’t happen again,” she added.