The Justice department on Friday indicted physician Brian Sy, the owner of WellMed Dialysis Center, for the complex crime of estafa for his involvement in the alleged ghost dialysis claims paid by Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
The department indicted Sy even as Senator Richard Gordon said Friday the government’s Universal Health Care project to be funded from the recently approved Sin Tax bill might also be embroiled in a scandal similar to the “ghost dialysis” scam.
To thwart a recurrence of the scam that has rocked PhilHealth, Gordon said he was looking into the possibility of amending some laws related to the matter.
“It’s important that we look into that [amending some laws]. I will religiously look at what’s going on,” Gordon said.
In a related development, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Friday stressed that the case against him for the alleged misuse of P500 million in Overseas Workers Welfare Administration funds to buy PhilHealth cards bearing the photo of former president and now outgoing Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has long been dismissed.
Duque issued the statement after Senator Panfilo Lacson raised the issue on the Health secretary’s involvement in the alleged illegal purchase of PhilHealth cards, while questioning his being spared from the latest PhilHealth dialysis scandal.
While President Rodrigo Duterte asked PhilHealth acting president and CEO Roy Ferrer and other Board members to resign, Lacson said he was baffled why Duque was not asked to do so.
The senator also contested the apparent “selective justice” in dealing with Duque.
Justice Undersecretary Mark Perete said their prosecutors had found probable cause to indict Sy, Edwin Roberto and Liezel Santos de Leon, the former employees who revealed the supposed scam, for estafa through falsification of official documents.
“The investigating prosecutors found that the WellMed officers conspired in using falsified documents to collect payments from PhilHealth for alleged medical services to patients who were dead,” Perete said in a statement.
Sy, Roberto, and De Leon have been in the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation since Monday afternoon. Roberto and De Leon have expressed willingness to be placed under witness protection.
Their lawyer, former Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, earlier said the two would have to be charged in court first if they wished to be discharged as state witnesses in the future.
Meanwhile, the inquest prosecutor referred the case against the seven other respondents”•WellMed officers and employees”•for preliminary investigation. They remain at large.
In a statement, Duque stressed that the issue raised by Lacson has been resolved already after the Supreme Court ruled with finality on the PhilHealth cards project in 2013.
He also said the same issue was brought up during the two confirmation hearings for him in the Senate”•one as Civil Service Commission in 2010 and another as Health secretary in 2018.
Duque recalled that at that time, Lacson, a member of the Commission on Appointments, agreed that the issue was immaterial to his appointment.