The questionable practice is an issue that has raised … conflicts of interest … within the medical profession.
Doctors engaging in unethical practices that are detrimental to the Philippine healthcare system have no place in the medical profession.
Such practices are tantamount to a dereliction of professional duty. Bothered by the alleged impropriety, the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC) Board of Medicine decided to proceed with the formal investigation of the administrative case against two Bell-Kenz Pharma Inc. officers.
The PRC board is probing the case against Dr. Luis Raymond Go and Dr. Viannely Berwyn Flores for what it described as dishonorable and unprofessional conduct.
Lawyer and human rights advocate Lorenzo “Erin” Tañada III, who filed the administrative complaint in July, said the PRC’s ruling affirmed the gravity of the allegations involving the doctors’ roles in Bell-Kenz’s purported multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme.
The questionable practice is an issue that has raised urgent concerns over ethics, conflicts of interest and patient welfare within the medical profession.
“This is a step toward making doctors accountable,” Tañada said. “We have asserted that the alleged Bell-Kenz scheme goes beyond corporate marketing―its true harm lies in how it compromises the independence and integrity of medical judgment.”
Doctors through the scheme prescribe medicines produced and sold by a certain pharmaceutical company in exchange for financial incentives and other material rewards.
The MLM involvement violates the Professional Regulatory Code and the Code of Ethics of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA), which prohibits doctors from receiving commissions or engaging in commercial endorsements that affect their independence and judgment.
The patient is at the receiving end of the MLM practice. The Generic Act of 1988 encourages doctors to use the generic names of prescribed medicines to patients.
The board in its resolution said the complaint sufficiently alleged violations of the Code of Ethics of the medical profession, especially the charge that both physicians participated in unethical and dishonorable conduct.
The PRC added its board can independently pursue its mandate to ensure ethical medical practice, while acknowledging that related allegations may be subject to separate actions before other agencies.
Tañada contends that a doctor’s involvement in an MLM scheme raises red flags that cannot be ignored when the medical profession is expressly bound by strict ethical rules prohibiting conflicts of interest.
The board rejected claims that the complaint lacked sufficient evidence, noting that it was supported by transcripts of the doctors’ own sworn testimonies during last year’s Senate inquiry.
The board said the admissions formed the core factual basis of the complaint.
Tañada, for his part, said the PRC ruling reiterated that the Bell-Kenz model purportedly blurred professional boundaries by allegedly incentivizing doctors through commissions, downlines and product-based earnings. Such arrangements, he said, had no place in a profession built on patient trust.
The lawyer stressed that the case was about protecting the credibility of the medical profession and preventing similar schemes from taking root in the healthcare system.
Crystal clear decision
The Supreme Court is paving the way for the return of some P60 billion worth of funds from Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).
With the fund transfer deemed unconstitutional, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the restoration of the withdrawn funds under the proposed General Appropriations Act (GAA). The Marcos government had used the money to fund other priority programs of the government that were in dire need of cash.
The bicameral conference (bicam) committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives is now hammering out a consolidated version of the 2026 GAA. or national budget law. This includes the restoration of the remitted P60 billion funds from PhilHealth back to the health insurer in its budget for next year
All seems well but critics of the administration are pressing for the resignation or prosecution of certain public officials believed to be behind the transfer of excess funds of government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs), especially PhilHealth, in 2004.
The arguments of the critics, however, are out line. Even the SC in its decision found no criminal liability on the part of the Department of Finance (DOF) in ordering the remittance of the excess funds to the National Treasury.
The Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg), for instance, urged Congress, the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate how the P60 billion in unused PhilHealth subsidies was used.
Cenpeg also wants to hold all public officials who had authorized and approved the fund realignment accountable.
Replacing the withdrawn P60 billion with a new budget item in the 2026 GAA, per Cenpeg. is a no-no. It argued that the budget restoration would supposedly shield those responsible for the diversion from accountability―and go against the SC’s Dec. 3 ruling on the fund transfer.
The critics also urged the Office of the Ombudsman to form a fact-finding task force to probe and penalize those involved in the cash trasnfer of PhilHealth’s P60 billion in idle funds.
The faultfinders’ assertions have become ridiculous. The SC justices, in their Dec. 3 decision voiding the GOCC fund transfer, said then-Finance Secretary Ralph Recto was not criminally liable in ordering the sweep.
The DOF, says the court, effected the transfer only because of the “compulsory directive” from Congress under last year’s GAA.
E-mail: rayenano@yahoo.com or extrastory2000@gmail.com
