SENATE President Francis “Chiz” Escudero yesterday said the P74-billion subsidy that the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) is requesting for 2025 should instead be given to the Department of Health (DOH) because the state insurer is not fully utilizing its funds.
“My own position is, if they have an excess fund of P500 billion, why do they still need a subsidy from the national government? We should just use it for other DOH programs, still for health but not for them (PhilHealth),” Escudero said in a press conference.
The request for subsidy is being questioned amid the transfer of PhilHealth’s unused or excess funds to the National Treasury. The transfer was stopped by the Supreme court last month.
Escudero said PhilHealth has been asking for billions of pesos in subsidy but it does not apparently use them for their intended purposes – to ease the burden of its beneficiaries in paying hospital bills.
“They don’t even use their money so, why add more to increase the money that will just be hidden in their pockets and not used? That doesn’t seem like a fair and judicious use of government’s funds and fiscal space,” he added.
Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito, during the PhilHealth budget deliberations Tuesday night, said lawmakers “felt deceived” when they fought for more funding for the state insurer only to find out that “billions remain unused.”
“The fund should have been used for the people,” Ejercito, principal sponsor and author of the Universal Health Care Act, said in Filipino.
Ejercito said data from the National Health Objectives 2023-2024, showed that in 2019, the PhilHealth’s support value for patients was at 66 percent, down to 43.58 percent in 2020 and 56.8 percent in 2021.
He said data from the DOH showed that PhilHealth contributed 13.6 percent to the nation’s health spending in 2022.
“Any unused funds signify failure, not success,” he added.
EXCESS FUNDS
PhilHealth president Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said there are three reasons for the excess funds.
These are PhilHealth was not able to enhance its case packages, people were afraid to get out of their house to visit the doctor due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that premium contributions “were already set” that even if lots of funds were in place, the collection for premium payments continued.
He also said he is not to be blamed for the excess funds because he was appointed to the post only in November 2022. But Ejercito said two years is quite long enough to amends PhilHealth’s assistance.
Ledesma said he “takes full responsibility” of the present problems but he has implemented “aggressive” measures to address the senators’ concerns, including the case rates which were not adjusted by his predecessors.
He said he is not “proud” that PhilHealth has excess funds.
The DOH and PhilHealth’s budget were deferred for submission for plenary approval after senators who were not present during the deliberations wanted to ask more questions to the agencies.
PhilHealth, in a statement, said it has settled around P137.6 billion in medical claims from January to October this year.
It said the amount is 38 percent higher compared to same period in 2023.
The higher amount paid follows increases in PhilHealth case rate packages by 30 percent in February. – With Gerard Naval
Significant increases in medical coverage were also put in place for hemorrhagic stroke, ischemic stroke, bronchial asthma, neonatal sepsis, breast cancer, and pneumonia.
The higher medical claims paid by PhilHealth was welcomed by the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc.
“This is okay since the patients have nearly no out-of-pocket expenses,” said the group’s president Dr Jose de Grano.
