PhilHealth office. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO Why should PhilHealth give its funds when there are many things that should be fixed? Maybe because we were not consulted in the first place. The Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
(PhilHealth) labor union has joined the opposition against the transfer of the state health insurer’s supposedly unused funds of nearly P90 billion to the national government and called for expanding health benefits using that money to lessen the out-of-pocket expenses of Filipinos needing medical care. In an open letter dated Aug. 13, PhilHealth-WHITE (Workers for Hope, Integrity, Transparency and Empowerment), also called out the management for claiming it had “surplus” funds but couldn’t implement benefits for the marginalized sectors, including persons with disabilities and solo parents.
READ: PhilHealth pressed more to explain data theft, leakage “There have been many discussions and studies on the controversy that we are once again facing—the remittance of P89.9 billion of PhilHealth to the national government. The law is clear with it: it is prohibited, it cannot happen and it should not happen,” PhilHealth-WHITE president Maria Fe Francisco said in the letter.
The union held the same position of budget watchdogs and members of medical professional organizations that remitting the unutilized government subsidies of PhilHealth back to the treasury was also in violation of Section 11 of Republic Act No. 11223, or the Universal Health Care (UH.