The Senate has approved the allocation of P6.78 billion to cover the PhilHealth benefits of 2.8 million senior citizens in the country, Senator Ralph Recto said on Saturday.
Senators also approved the inclusion in the P3-trillion 2016 national budget of P7.5 billion required to grant P6,000 annual aid to 1,182,914 indigent elders. The funding complies with Republic Act 10645, which is authored by Recto and makes mandatory the automatic PhilHealth membership of senior citizens.
In a statement, Recto said the P6.78 billion for the medical insurance of senior citizens is part of the P43.8 billion the government will spend in 2016 for insurance premiums of 18.24 million poor households.
The law stated that there is no need for elders to present a PhilHealth card, but only a valid identification card proving his or her identity and age, to avail themselves of PhiIHealth benefits.
Of the 6.3 million senior citizens in the country, an estimated 2.8 million are neither PhilHealth members, nor dependents of PhilHealth members.
The P6.8-billion allocation will pay for the health insurance of those not presently captured by any of PhilHealth coverage schemes.
Recto said on the government’s Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens Program, the 2016 funding of P7.51 billion is P1.54 billion bigger than the P5.96 billion this year.
The P1.54-billion increase would fund the enrolment of an additional 243,332 seniors, whose numbers will increase to 1,182,914 from this year’s 939,609.
“We are promoting the idea that all indigent seniors 60 years old and above must be covered by the proposed allocation. The policy is No Senior Left Behind,” Recto said.
Recto said the Senate has a good track record in expanding the coverage of social protection programs. He cited the 2015 budget of the senior pension program, which was originally pegged at P4.76 billion but which the Senate successfully raised to P5.96 billion, “by cutting the fat in the budget and rechanneling it to good programs.”
The grant of a monthly pension to economically disadvantaged seniors is mandated by Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.
This law described an indigent senior citizen as someone, 60 years old and above, who is “frail, sickly, or with disability, and without pension or permanent source of income, compensation or financial assistance from his relatives to support his needs.”
Recto said efforts are still underway to increase the budget for senior pension as there are claims that the amount does not cover all seniors who should be beneficiaries of the program.
As a result of discovered data discrepancies, the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the advocacy groups for senior citizens had lobbied for an additional P1.8 billion to place 285,793 seniors more in the program.
Recto had included in the committee report of the Senate finance subcommittee he chairs a P2.8 billion augmentation in the senior pension program.
This was not, however, carried in the General Appropriations Bill, which the Senate approved Thursday.
“Hopefully, the requested amount, or at least a portion of it, will be considered favorably during the Bicameral Conference Committee on the national budget, “ he said.
The House and Senate panels that will reconcile their differing versions of the national budget will meet on Dec.1 at the Senate.