Senators have recommended the filing of graft charges against Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) president and CEO Ricardo Morales and other top officials that Senator Panfilo Lacson described as a “mafia” operating inside the state insurance agency.
Other officials to be charged are Fund Management Sector senior vice president Renato Limsiaco Jr., senior vice president and chief information officer Jovita Aragona, and senior ICT officer Calixto Gabuya.
Lacson said the Senate Committee of the Whole recommended charges for malversation, perjury and violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.
In an interview over radio dzBB, Lacson said Morales admitted to having authorized and approved the release of funds.
Lacson said he hoped Senate President Vicente Sotto III would issue the committee report on the Senate hearings into the irregularities at PhilHealth that resulted in the loss of billions of pesos.
Lacson said he was convinced that those who manipulated the release of funds were officials in the executive committee.
It is the executive committee at the central office that prepares the master list of health care institutions that would be first to receive funds under the controversial interim reimbursement mechanism (IRM), Lacson said.
Resigned PhilHealth anti-fraud officer Thorsson Montes Keith testified before the Senate that the PhilHealth "mafia," composed of the executive committee members, stole some P15 billion through fraudulent schemes, including those involving the IRM.
PhilHealth has denied Keith's allegations.
Senator Christopher Go, meanwhile, sought the help of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to protect PhilHealth documents and preserve the integrity of the investigation.
He also urged the NBI and the other authorities to arrest those attempting to hide or destroy evidence on the alleged widespread corruption in PhilHealth.
Go, who serves as chairman of the Senate committee on health and demography, said the investigation must lead to the prosecution of those responsible in order to fully reform PhilHealth.
Senator Francis Pangilinan noted that the destruction of documents in PhilHealth regional office was a blatant insult to the ongoing Senate investigation.
"Their destruction [of evidence] is another set of crimes," Pangilinan said, referring to reports that “a leaky roof” had destroyed records and damaged computers in a regional PhilHealth office.
"We call on Health Secretary Duque, who is chairman of the PhilHealth board, to show leadership now and order to secure the documents. We call as well on the other Cabinet secretaries on the PhilHealth board to act now and ensure that the documents are intact," Pangilinan said.
PhilHealth on Sunday assured the public that members can continue to obtain their health insurance benefits as usual through PhilHealth-accredited facilities, despite the ongoing probe.
“We also wish to clarify that the preventive suspension orders recently issued by the Ombudsman to some of its current and former officers is not in any way connected with the on-going hearings in both houses of Congress regarding the above-mentioned alleged corruption,” said PhilHealth in a statement.
The Ombudsman order stemmed from the complaints of “grave misconduct, oppression and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service” filed by some regional officers in connection to the administrative cases filed against them between 2017 to 2019, the agency said.
Meanwhile, Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo said she believes the government could have lost as much as P15 billion in fake pneumonia claim benefits with PhilHealth.
Interviewed over Dobol B sa News TV, Quimbo, a former Philippine Competition Commission head and University of the Philippines economics professor, said she used the data from PhilHealth itself and from the Department of Health that P4 billion was lost due to bogus pneumonia cases in 2019 alone.
“We still have not looked at the fraud involving cataracts, say for example, or dialysis. We have just seen one illness, pneumonia, amounting to P4 billion a year,” she said.
"And in the last five years, what I saw was almost P15 billion was lost due to fraudulent claims for pneumonia alone," she added.