SEN. Panfilo Lacson has filed a bill that seeks to integrate the Department of Health’s Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (Maifip) Program under the Universal Health Care Act to eliminate “overlaps and redundancies” with other government medical programs.
“By consolidating Maifip within the framework of the UHC, we can effectively address the issue of payment delays for medical services rendered by DOH-licensed and/or accredited health facilities because of political interference. The proposed legislation also aims to eliminate the politicization of the program, thus curbing the culture of mendicancy and political patronage,” Lacson said in filing the “Universal Medical Assistance Act of 2025.”
Lacson filed the proposed measure amid reports that private hospitals refused to honor “guarantee letters” issued by government officials to indigent patients under the Maifip program due to unresolved payables, which have piled up over several months.
While guarantee letters issued by governors, senators, congressmen, and other high government officials serve to facilitate the payment of hospital bills for indigent patients, some private healthcare facilities feared that their services might not be paid under Maifip due to the guarantee letters endorsed by candidates who lost in the recent elections.
“Hence, this bill seeks to consolidate and harmonize Maifip with the Universal Health Care under the unified program to be known as the Universal Medical Assistance Program (UMAP). UMAP shall be accessible to all patients regardless of indigency status who are financially incapacitated and unable to meet the necessary expenditures for the medical treatment of their catastrophic or life- and limb-threatening illness,” he said in the bill’s explanatory note.
He said UMAP will serve as a “supplementary but guaranteed source of financing” that will benefit qualified patients who still have to incur out-of-pocket payments even after exhausting PhilHealth benefits and other subsidies.
Lacson said the bill also includes a provision to penalize “political exploitation and manipulation of the program” to make sure that it is properly implemented.
