This is graphic robbery in broad daylight
RATHER disturbing, if frighteningly sad.
The government has lost P123.7 billion to smoke. Not to fire, but to cigarettes—smuggled, untaxed, and now choking helplessly Universal Health Care to throes of death.
This is not a rounding error but the collapse of the promise we made: Universal Health Care.
Many real-world numbers, like decimals and fractions, cannot be represented perfectly with a finite number of digits, so a computer or calculator must round them.
The Philippine universal health care law, known known as the Universal health care Act was signed in 2019 and aims to provide all Filipinos with guaranteed access to quality healthcare and financial protection from medical expenses.
Key provisions include automatic enrollment for all citizens in the National Health Insurance Program administered by PhilHealth, strengthening primary care, and institutionalizing health technology ass4essment for priority setting.
The plan, under the scenario, was simple. Tax cigarettes. Use the money to treat the sick.
For a time, it almost worked. In 2021, excise collections hit P176 billion, according to available figures.
By 2024, they dipped to P134 billion—a fall of P42 billion.
In 2025, the hole, according to keen observers on the ground, will total P123.7 billion as actual tax collections fall short of promised targets.
Why this drop?
Because illicit trade surged.
Because enforcement cracked under pressure.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue admits the country loses at least P40 billion to P52 yearly to illicit cigarettes and vapes, with some reports placing the figure as high as P60 billion in lost taxes for tobacco alone.
This revenue loss is due to products evading taxes through smuggling, resulting in lower prices and increased accessibility, particularly for youth.
Some estimates from consulting firms suggest a higher annual loss of around $1.9 billion to $2 billion from the tobacco trade alone.
Contributing factors have been identified like price disparity, where illicit cigarettes can sell for as low as P40 per pack, compared to legal brands that cost around P130, making them more appealing to consumers.
Others are weak enforcement, where porous borders and a large coastline make smuggling easier, especially given the archipelagic nature of the country.; online availability, where E-commerce platforms have made illicit products widely available, particularly to younger demographics.
Then there is misdeclaration of goods, where importers may misdeclare products to evade higher excise taxes on certain types of vapes, a problem that requires amending the current Vape Law.
Whatever, this is graphic robbery in broad daylight.
And the victims? Not the rich. They are the poor, the rural, the sick.
Universal Health Care turns hollow.
Every peso lost to smuggling is a peso stolen from PhilHealth.
It means fewer reimbursements, narrower benefit packages, patients turned away.
It means hospitals frozen in time.
The Health Facilities Enhancement Program (HFEP)—the promised upgrade for rural clinics, additional beds, better equipment—lies drawing in its breath.
Some sharp observers estimate P20 billion could purchase two million hospital beds.
Meanwhile, we average one bed per 1,121 Filipinos, according to available figures.
For comparison, the World Health Organization has historically recommended a standard of approximately 4 beds per 1,000 people.
The Philippines’ ratio indicates over 1,000 people for every one bed, a figure often used to emphasize the need for increased healthcare investment and bed capacity, especially in public hospitals and rural areas.
Not just beds. Sin tax funds pay for cancer therapy, dialysis, anti-TB drugs, maternal care, vaccines, community doctors in far provinces.
Those doctors—many already groping for resources—are deserting to private hospitals or overseas.
We lose some 13,000 nurses a year to foreign recruitment.
Wile non-communicable diseases kill nearly 70 percent of Filipinos—heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes—our system is now asking those patients to carry the burden.
With funding collapsing, we fight blind, applying band-aids to deep wounds.
DOH Secretary Teodoro Herbosa himself has sounded the alarm.
“Gusto ng ating Pangulo na pataasin pa ang sinasagot ng PhilHealth… Pati dental benefits at para sa mental health, ating dadagdagan,” Herbosa told senators in recent budget hearings.
But he also conceded: without stronger funding streams, those promises are hard to keep.
PhilHealth, for its part, admitted its benefits budget will hit P305 billion this year while income lags far behind.
Without sin taxes, benefits could run out by November.
Every “cheap” stick sold in a sari-sari store is not cheap. It comes at the expense of vaccines not given, dialysis not delivered, doctors not hired.
It is Universal Health Care hollowed out, one illegal pack at a time.
We must be clear: this is theft.
Not abstract theft of numbers in a ledger, but of lives, health, and dignity.
We have allowed this to go on for an excessively long and unacceptable period.
We are not just being robbed of taxes.
We are being robbed of years of life, of chances to fight cancer, of dignity in sickness. The P123.7-billion hole is not a budget gap—it is a mass grave.
So the next time you see a pack of smuggled sticks sold on the street, ask yourself: which life was stolen to make it cheap?
Universal Health Care was meant to be our safety net. Today, that net has been cut. And we are the ones falling through.
