Bishop slams bicam move on ‘health pork barrel’
A Church leader has called on lawmakers to “renounce pork once and for all” as he criticized the decision of the bicameral conference committee to increase the budget of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated program (MAIFIP).
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Caloocan Bishop Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David described the MAIFIP as “nothing but a health pork barrel in the national budget,” noting that patients in need of medical help need to secure guarantee letters from politicians under the program.
This puts politicians “in control of who gets the assistance, how much, and when,” with health care being provided not as a “right,” but as a “favor mediated by political power—a classic system of patronage that turns illness into utang na loob (debt of gratitude).”
“Such systems are corrosive, not only to governance but to the moral fabric of society. They teach people, subtly but persistently, that survival depends on proximity to power. They replace trust in institutions with loyalty to patrons,” lamented the bishop.
He added that these pork schemes “wound the dignity of the poor and, in the process, degrade public office itself. A society that normalizes begging as a pathway to public service slowly erodes its own moral foundations.”
Lawmakers’ intervention
David made the remarks after MAIFIP, which had already been criticized by civil society watchdogs as a form of pork barrel, had its budget for next year raised to P51 billion in the bicameral conference committee after it was reduced to P24 billion by the Senate.
In a 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court had declared as unconstitutional the Priority Development Assistance Fund or “pork barrel,” and nullified the laws that provided lawmakers lump-sum allocations to fund their chosen projects.
The high tribunal pointed out that legislators cannot intervene in the execution of the national budget.
“Yet programs that rely on guarantee letters reproduce precisely what the court prohibited,” David said.
He said MAIFIP, as currently structured, is a lump-sum appropriation that requires postenactment intervention by legislators to be accessed.
“The sick should receive care because they are sick, not because they know someone. Students should receive support because they qualify, not because they were endorsed. Farmers should receive aid because of need and merit, not because of political allegiance,” he said.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) had earlier condemned the pork barrel system as an “act of terrorism” against the poor, saying in a 2013 pastoral letter that the promotion of patronage politics is “contrary to the principles of stewardship, transparency and accountability.”
David, a former president of the CBCP, appealed to members of Congress to “restore dignity where it has been quietly eroded” and “let compassion flow through institutions, not personalities.”
Instead of guarantee letters, the bishop said a “better and more honorable path” to universal health care is providing medical assistance through the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and DOH hospitals “without political mediation.”
Budget reforms
Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson on Sunday said compromise is inherent in bicameral conference committee deliberations on the 2026 national budget, but stressed that the integrity of the spending bill must remain nonnegotiable.
Lacson said the Senate would fight to keep the budget “pork”-free even as lawmakers reconcile differing provisions of the proposed 2026 General Appropriations Act in the bicameral conference.
“The bicam could be a matter of give-and-take but we must ensure the integrity of the budget and not allow self-interest. The interest of constituents is important but not the interest of kickbacks in infrastructure projects,” Lacson said in a radio interview.
He said the Senate’s stance is anchored on reforms already introduced in its version of the 2026 budget, aimed at preventing abuse and last-minute insertions that could undermine public trust.
Among these is a plan put forward by Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Senate finance committee chair Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian for the chamber to ratify not only the bicameral conference committee report but the enrolled or final version of the budget bill that incorporates the bicam report, he noted.
‘Allocables’
Lacson added that the Senate also removed “allocables,” which he described as a new form of pork barrel that allows funding for projects even before they are identified, opening the door to practices such as rigged bidding favoring selected contractors.
He added that the chamber struck out the Sustainable Infra Projects Alleviating Gaps (Sipag), noting that many items appeared to duplicate projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways’ basic infrastructure programs, and trimmed unprogrammed appropriations to include only legitimate items such as foreign-assisted projects and the Armed Forces of the Philippines modernization program. —WITH A REPORT FROM PNA
