Senators strongly objected to the transfer of the second tranche of Philhealth funds amounting to P10 billion last Aug. 21 to the national treasury.
Sen. JV Ejercito and Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III reiterated their stand that the unutilized Philhealth funds should only be used to enhance the benefits of Philhealth members.
Ejercito, author and principal sponsor of the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act, has maintained that excess Philhealth funds be solely used for health programs and projects.
“PhilHealth, in the first place, should have been more proactive in crafting more benefit packages and improving those already existing to lessen the out of pocket expenses of members,” he said.
The existence of unused funds, Ejercito said, is a clear indicator of a wasted opportunity to do more for our people who desperately depend on the relief brought by our national insurance program.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III tagged the transfer of funds as “alarming and bad news.”
“We can only appeal to the executive branch to abandon and reverse their plan,” he said.
The Senate opposition leader said they still have hope that “we can force the reversal of the current action of the executive branch since there is a pending case before the Supreme Court.”
The Supreme Court has ordered respondents to answer the petition questioning the constitutionality of the fund transfer.
Philhealth President Emmanuel Ledesma, Jr. has said that if the High Court orders the return of the funds, they will do so.
Pimentel said he finds it incomprehensible how PhilHealth has “excess funds” when Filipino’s share out of out-of-pocket health expenditures is the 3rd highest in the ASEAN region.
“We believe that this is a result of huge inefficiencies on the part of PhilHealth, and a symptom of a systemic issue that must be solved,” health advocate Dr. Tony Leachon said.
He emphasized that Philhealth must expand its benefits sufficiently to implement UHC which has been here for years and the transfer of funds should be stopped because it only has P13.88b left from “subsidies”.
Meanwhile, Ejercito said they do not blame the Department of Finance (DOF) in their pursuit of locating idle funds to further other programs of the government.
“Let us give PhilHealth the means to effectively and efficiently perform their mandate. It can only be done if they possess the funds required to carry out this noble undertaking,” he said.
He said the Senate just passed on second reading the bill lowering the Philhealth premium contribution starting next year.
As such, he said Philhealth would need their funds to continue the enhancement of its benefit packages next year to achieve genuine universal health care.
