At the plenary debates for the proposed 2025 budget of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on Tuesday, president and CEO Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. took the opportunity to explain to lawmakers how the agency accrued P89-billion excess funds.
Ledesma addressed questions from Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito, who was among the legislators that advocated for the Universal Healthcare (UHC) Law—a measure that was supposed to make access to quality healthcare possible for Filipinos.
The PhilHealth chief prefaced his argument that he is just two years in the office and is trying to play catch up with the UHC goals. But he attributed the accumulation of the spare funds to the following reasons:
- The unused funds had been stuck for 12 years, way before he was appointed to the position;
- The Covid-19 paranoia that allegedly made people hesitant to reach out for help; and
- The premium contributions of members that is continuously collected by the agency.
Ejercito did not appear satisfied with these explanations. “Two years, Mr. President, is long enough. We cannot keep offering a two-year learning curve as an excuse,” the senator said mostly in Filipino.
Ledesma said PhilHealth is currently being aggressive with their initiatives. He reported that the agency increased its healthcare coverage by 30 percent or an additional 9,000 case rates. He is hoping to bring this further to another 30 to 50 percent by next month.
“I really respect the opinion, Mr. President, but I like to think that we are doing our job. We are doing a lot of things and we are being aggressive,” the PhilHealth chief replied.
PhilHealth assured the Senate that the agency will continuously take actions to implement the UHC and achieve its intended goals for the Filipinos.
The Supreme Court earlier issued a temporary restraining order, preventing plans to revert the excess PhilHealth funds back to the National Treasury.
