PhilHealth must settle its debts

In light of recent pronouncements by its executives that “bankruptcy is not (in) the vocabulary of PhilHealth right now,” there is an urgent need for it to settle both individual and hospital debts that have reportedly been mounting. Doing so would assure us that hospitals can continuously provide the necessary medical services to PhilHealth beneficiaries.

Just recently, PhilHealth has increased its benefits for members and further plans to implement a 30 to 50 percent increase in benefits by November, 2024, on the coverage of 10 burdensome diseases, among them pneumonia, severe dengue, acute stroke, chronic kidney disease, asthma, sepsis, ischemic heart disease, cataracts, and cancer of the lung, liver, ovary, and prostate.

It also plans to reduce the premium contributions from 5 to 3 percent. This move, however, has to be further validated since a provision under the Universal Health Care (UHC) states the need for a continuing increase in premium contribution among members to sustain the program amid rising healthcare cost and demand.

Just how feasible are these plans? Can PhilHealth increase member benefits while reducing premium contributions, as well as acceding to the transfer of P89.9 billion of its unutilized budget to the national treasury? This, despite protests from some sectors that deem such transfer as unconstitutional.

The fund transfer, some say, is necessary since, over the years, PhilHealth has allegedly been less aggressive in disbursing its funds to provide the much-needed and improved benefits to its members.

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This is a wake-up call. It is never too late for PhilHealth to recover from its lackadaisical stance in improving the delivery of benefits to its members.