The re-imposition of capital punishment is again a hot topic. We need a new body of laws that looks at modern crimes in a new light.  

New mayors Isko Moreno, Vico Sotto, and Francis Zamora demonstrate strong political will that their predecessors didn’t seem to have, and to achieve popular goals that earlier leaders promised but failed to achieve. Their style of millennial leadership should be replicated in other localities.  

UHC is a daunting challenge if PhilHealth itself is not reformed. Policy reform has moved ahead of systems reform. Health insurance is essentially about systems: membership eligibility, provider accreditation, provider payment, and quality assurance. 

In the case of PhilHealth, fraud can arise from ghost patients, upcoding or upcasing, and over-admission. The costs of these different types of fraud have not been calculated, but they run in the hundreds of millions a year. 

The nutritional status of the Filipino children is buried in dusty academic journal articles that policymakers may not be aware of. It's about time to bring out the issues on nutrition into the policy table. 

Technocrats often do not know the daily constraints of ordinary people. It is time we looked at representation in a more inclusive light. True representativeness is the essence of democracy.

It was indeed the best of times for the Duterte administration’s senatorial slate, just as it was the worst of times for the opposition’s Otso Diretso. 

How do we correct the “tragedy of voting for the familiar” and the “regression to the mediocre” in the Senate?

Why are we still experiencing a water crisis in the east part of Metro Manila? 

Urbanization has sped away while urbanity has barely kept pace. We do need an urbanity movement, for as James Norman Hall has noted, “When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.”

Do we Filipinos are now swimming in Chinese loans? 

Money tends to cheapen sacrifice and love.