PhilHealth’s management could not think of new initiatives that would create one universal health insurance program…
Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is a big disappointment for the growing Philippine population. It is wanting in its mandate to provide sufficient insurance coverage and ensure an affordable and accessible health care services for all citizens.
Many have actually benefited from PhilHealth’s funds but it is not enough. A big proportion of the population could have received more benefit packages from PhilHealth had it been more creative and purposeful in expanding its services and utilizing its funds to the max.
Instead, billions of pesos funds lay idle in its reserves. PhilHealth’s management could not think of new initiatives that would create one universal health insurance program for the population.
The decision of the Department Finance (DOF) to transfer huge idle funds of PhilHealth to the national treasury smacks of mismanagement on the former.
PhilHealth has sat on billions of pesos of funds while failing to deliver a coherent roadmap for universal healthcare.
Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go of the Ateneo Policy Center agrees that the core issue bugging the state health insurer is not the reallocation of funds―it is PhilHealth’s inability to use its resources.
Thus, the decision of the government to transfer those unused funds―now the subject of a Supreme Court case―was a necessary intervention. The subsequent decision of Congress to allocate zero subsidy for PhilHealth, says Dr. Hartigan-Go, is a deliberate attempt to correct the agency’s dysfunction and compel accountability, planning and performance.
The government or Congress can reallocate those funds, for instance, to other state-owned hospitals in need of modern equipment. This will help the poorer segment of the population.
What harms Filipino citizens more is a system that hoards public funds while public health needs are unmet. What undermines universal healthcare isn’t a reallocation of idle resources―it is the absence of a serious, implementable plan to use those funds efficiently.
It is poor governance and a moral failure when agencies entrusted with funds choose to sit on them.
If one is fighting for genuine universal healthcare, let him or her identify the real culprit behind the failure and propose reforms. PhilHealth is the problem, plain and simple.
The transfer of the idle funds of PhilHealth to the Bureau of Treasury is a clear message for the state health insurer to improve its services and maximize the benefits available to its members.
PhilHealth is receiving a reprimand to utilize its funds efficiently or enhance its benefit packages, rather than allowing them to remain idle.
Department of Health (DOH) Assistant Secretary Dr. Albert Francis Domingo has already assured that even without the transfer of the P89.9-billion fund from PhilHealth, the government can and always will increase the healthcare benefits of Filipinos.
As I’ve written here before, the controversial transfer of funds is a judicious action that preserves the integrity of public funds.
The DOF acted on the transfer with merits and fiscal responsibility, in accordance with the fundamental principles of the Commission on Audit on the disbursement of public funds.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Kho Jr. saw PhilHealth’s passive fund management and called for a structural overhaul of the agency after noting governance shortcomings.
One should stop providing funds to PhilHealth if the agency’s financial manager cannot maximize the funds entrusted to him.
The DOF did its fiscal responsibility. Government funds are being moved to finance other priority programs. The past PhilHealth management failed to deploy its huge resources effectively.
The fund transfer did not harm the country’s healthcare program. Member contributions were untouched by the transfer of funds—only unused state subsidies were redirected.
PhilHealth must always strive to increase the health benefits to members and mend its sense of complacency.
It must go back to its mandate and serve as the “means for the healthy to help pay for the care of the sick… ”
E-mail: rayenano@yahoo.com or extrastory2000@gmail.com