As the Supreme Court today hears the oral arguments of the petitioners questioning the transfer of PhilHealth “excess” funds to the National Treasury, Health Workers Partylist firmly stands with our Kababayans and fellow health workers.
We say no to the transfer of PhilHealth excess funds. We say yes to adequate and direct funding for primary health facilities and public hospitals. We say yes to free, timely, appropriate, and quality health services.
Public funds directly allotted to public health and health facilities could save lives instead of being a mere drop in the National Treasury which would just be used for questionable discretionary pork-like projects.
Health is a basic human right. The State has the primary responsibility to ensure people’s right to health. Yet government data itself shows chronic neglect of people’s health. More than half of Filipinos die (51.6%) unattended by any health care provider . This does not include unreported deaths at home.
Government subsidy aside, PhilHealth is being run as a business venture rather than a government service. Did it really help provide affordable, acceptable, available, and accessible health care for all the Filipinos?
Despite the reported “excess” funds, PhilHealth have failed to protect the Filipinos from high out of pocket health payments. In 2023, the PSA reported that the “household out-of-pocket payment” contributes the highest share (44.4%) to the total current health expenditures in the Philippines. This means that the lion’s share of health costs is still paid by individual Filipinos rather than PhilHealth or insurance schemes.
Worse, the Commission on Audit findings on PhilHealth’s performance have repeatedly shown red flags on how funds have been managed. In the recent COA Audit Report, the total disallowances of PhilHealth totaled to P7.58B as of end-2023. These are on top of the reported long list of anomalies and irregularities that cost billions of pesos from direct contributions of members and taxpayers’ money.
Public funds should be directly allotted for free health care, not for business, not for corruption, not for pork!
