Popular Democratic Party Sen. José Luis Dalmau Santiago and Rep. Jorge Colberg Toro said Sunday that Gov. Fortuño is playing with the health of the people of Puerto Rico by cutting the Health Department's budget and focusing more on status legislation in Congress than on fighting for the island's parity in federal health reform.
The Health Department's placement in trusteeship due to the lack of funds to cover operational costs, including payroll, is the result of “the improvised manner in which the government designed its budget for this fiscal year, in which the majority of public agencies suffered significant budget cuts,” Dalmau said.
“The Health Department suffered a $35.4 million budget cut this year compared with last and, worse yet, 24 percent of its operational costs, or $205 million, is being funded with non-recurring funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or by loans from the [state] Stabilization Fund,” Dalmau said.
The island's health system, he said, “is on the verge of collapse.”
It is unfortunate that the governor did not take into consideration PDP suggestions to improve health care, such as the Integral Health Plan proposed in a Senate bill, Dalmau said.
For his part, Colberg Toro accused the governor of swapping the health of the people for a binding status plebiscite for the island, saying Fortuño is spending twice as much lobbying for status legislation compared as on pushing for parity in health reform.
“Four-hundred-and-sixty-thousand dollars was spent during the first six months that lobbyists' contracts were in effect, the majority of which was spent on the status bill. If this same pattern continues, $1,177,000 will have been spent by the end of the year on lobbyists, the majority of which will have been aimed at spearheading Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi's status bill instead of fighting for Puerto Rico's inclusion in the federal health program,” Colberg Toro said.
From April to June 2009, Fortuño administration lobbying firms DLA Piper LLP y Bryan Cave LLP had assigned seven lobbyists to push binding status legislation, while only two were assigned to press for the island's inclusion in federal health reform and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, Colberg Toro said.
“Fortuño's ideological fanaticism has led him to make an unforgivable swap of dedicating the majority of lobbyists' resources for the status bill instead of Puerto Rico's inclusion in the federal health program,” Colberg Toro said, adding: “He has betrayed the people by trading their health in exchange for a Pyrrhic victory in favor of statehood.”