Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Friday said the Task Force PhilHealth mandated to investigate graft and corruption at the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. will wrap up its investigation into the agency’s multi-billion-peso fund mess.
“We’ll wind up our hearings next week, thereafter analyze and consolidate all the information and evidence that we have gathered and proceed to prepare our report with recommendations to the President,” Guevarra said, in a text message to reporters.
He said the Department of Justice and other participating agencies, such as the National Bureau of Investigation, Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, Anti-Money Laundering Council and the Commission on Audit, the Office of the Special Assistant to the President (OSAP) and the National Prosecution Service (NPS) “will try to conclude some of their ongoing investigations or special audits.”
“While the Office of the Ombudsman and the Civil Service Commission will exert efforts to resolve PhilHealth cases already pending with their offices,” Guevarra said.
While the Inter-agency Task Force will submit its report and recommendation to President Duterte on September 14, Guevarra said the composite teams will continue with their investigation of the more complicated PhilHealth cases of graft or fraud and file the appropriate legal action even beyond that termination date.
Guevarra earlier expressed hope that certain legal actions would be filed with the Ombudsman.
“But the deeper and more thorough investigative work and structural reforms affecting the central and regional offices will continue for a long time thereafter. We hope that the new leaders who will be installed at PhilHealth will carry on this internal cleansing and restoration on their own, ” Guevarra said.
Guevarra said various participating agencies composing the task force have agreed to speed up the investigation and special audit on PhilHealth.
“Task Force PhilHealth as a composite group will initiate fresh investigations on alleged anomalies that are not the subject of any ongoing investigation or audit,” Guevarra said.
On Friday, PhilHealth said there is no truth to the report that P600 million in amnesty have been paid out to hospitals for denied claims.
PhilHealth said the claims in question were denied payment due to late filing and refiling.
It said the possibility of these claims being considered for payment under an amnesty program are still subject to issuance of a signed board resolution as well as specific guidelines thereafter.
“All of these have not yet been realized, and therefore no fund release to speak of,” a PhilHealth statement said.
The state insurer has committed to provide Congress with the documents pertinent to the matter to completely shed light on the issue.
“The agency defers to their good judgment to see that no such amount has been paid out yet.”
“Time and again, PhilHealth has committed itself to cooperating to all the investigations and it will continue to do so to ferret out the truth for the benefit of the Filipino public that it serves,” it added.
Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers earlier scored PhilHealth officials over the grant of a P600 million amnesty to delinquent hospitals that had been claiming payments for eight years.
Meanwhile, Senator Panfilo Lacson said more than emergency powers, what the President needs is “real, honest-to-goodness, strong political will” to solve the problem of corruption in PhilHealth.
Since PhilHealth is a creation of a law passed by Congress, he said the President has no statutory power to reorganize the agency.
“So he actually needs an act of Congress to delegate to him such power or authority,” said Lacson.
If the President’s intention is to cleanse PhilHealth of scalawags and misfits, Lacson said Duterte may not need that delegated authority anymore as he has the Philippine National Police, National Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice and other instrumentalities of government at his disposal.
Furthermore, he said there is no time to lose in exercising such political will.
“No matter how good our country’s economic managers are, if our Health department is below the level of incompetence in the middle of this pandemic, we will all sink before we can even start to swim,” Lacson said.
For a start, Lacson said he can fire its ex-officio chairman—Health Secretary Francisco Duque III–and replace him with someone with “above-average leadership traits,” such as competence, honesty and integrity, and someone who won’t wash his hands but takes full responsibility for what PhilHealth does or fails to do.
