Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Health, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Parliament Bill No. 233
In committeeAn Act Establishing the Buldon General Hospital with 25 Bed Capacity at the Municipality of Buldon, Province of Maguindanao Del Norte and Appropriating Funds Therefor
Filed
First Reading
Referred to the Committee on Health, Committee on Finance, Budget and ManagementNow
Under committee study or floor debate. Amendments are still possible, and this is the stage where public input carries the most weight.
What this measure does
This establishes the Buldon General Hospital with 25 beds in Buldon, Maguindanao del Norte, to serve primarily but not only the patients of that municipality.
Why it was proposed
The note builds a catchment and then measures it. The northern part of the first district of Maguindanao holds 6 municipalities, with 2020 census populations given for each: Sultan Kudarat 105,121, Parang 102,914, Buldon 39,684, Barira 36,143, Matanog 36,034 and Sultan Mastura 25,331 — 345,227 people in total.
Those 6 municipalities are served by 2 hospitals: the Cotabato Sanitarium at Barangay Pinaring in Sultan Kudarat with 250 beds, and the Iranun District Hospital at Parang with 25, making 275 beds between them.
The Department of Health standard, the note says, is 1 bed per 1,000 population. On that measure 275 beds serve 275,000 people, against a catchment of 345,227 — a deficiency of at least 70 beds. The bill asks for 25 of them.
Who it affects
- The 39,684 residents of Buldon, and the wider catchment of 345,227 across 6 municipalities.
- Patients currently travelling to the Cotabato Sanitarium at Pinaring or the Iranun District Hospital at Parang.
- Those 2 hospitals, which between them carry a catchment 70,000 people larger than their bed count supports.
- The Ministry of Health, which would supervise the new hospital.
Who would implement it
- Ministry of Health, which would supervise the hospital and set its structure and staffing
Funding
Carries an appropriation. No amount is named; the title carries "appropriating funds therefor" and the operative text leaves the sum to the appropriations act. The comparable hospitals enacted in this registry each received ₱50 million initially, regardless of bed count.
What changes if it becomes law
- Buldon gains a 25-bed general hospital.
- The northern first district's bed count rises from 275 toward the 345 its population implies.
- Patients from neighbouring municipalities gain a nearer facility, since the hospital serves beyond Buldon.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The method is what makes this bill worth reading, and it is also where the bill undersells itself. Having established a shortfall of at least 70 beds across the catchment, the measure asks for 25 — about a third of the gap it has just documented. That is either modesty about what the region can fund or an acknowledgment that 3 more bills would be needed, and the companion measures filed the same week for Sultan Mastura, Kabuntalan and Cotabato City suggest the second.
The arithmetic has since been overtaken, and in a way that vindicates it. One of the 2 hospitals the note counts is the Iranun District Hospital at Parang, credited with 25 beds. In May 2025 BAA 73 converted that hospital into the Iranun Provincial Hospital with an authorised capacity of 200 beds — which, on this bill's own ratio, adds 175,000 people's worth of provision to the same catchment and closes the 70-bed deficiency several times over. The bill that did it, Bill No. 246, was filed a month after this one by a different member, and neither document mentions the other.
That is the substantive point about this cluster. Four bills arguing from a bed ratio and a fifth converting a district hospital to provincial scale were all before the same Parliament in the same period, and there is no sign in any of them that the cumulative effect on a shared catchment was ever computed. The method Ambolodto brought is exactly the method that would have caught it.
MP Ambolodto filed 4 hospital bills over 2 days in July 2023 — Buldon, Sultan Mastura, Kabuntalan and Cotabato City — and all 4 argue from the same method rather than from hardship. Each names the catchment, counts its population from the 2020 census, lists the hospitals serving it with their bed capacities, applies the Department of Health ratio of 1 bed per 1,000 people, and states the resulting shortfall. No other hospital bills in this registry do the arithmetic. All 4 remain at Second Reading, Committee Stage.
A drafting note common to the set: the constitutional citations are unreliable. Three of the 4 bills cite the right to health as "Section 15, Article III" when it is Article II, and 1 cites the integrated-approach provision as "Section 11, Article XII" when it is Article XIII. Each bill has at least 1 wrong reference and they are not wrong in the same way, which is what happens when a shared preamble is retyped rather than copied.
Sources