Former government officials, including ex-Cabinet secretaries, have opposed the diversion of P89.9 billion in Philippine Health Insurance Inc. (PhilHealth) funds to augment the financing for unprogrammed items in the 2024 budget.

In a statement, they emphasized that PhilHealth’s “excess funds,” which was how the idle money was termed, should not be considered savings.

Instead, it reflects PhilHealth’s failure to adequately expand its benefit packages, they said.

The statement ran contrary to a separate position paper of former finance secretaries declaring their support for the move of Finance Secretary Ralph Recto transferring the funds for use by the government.

The position paper focused on the difficulty of mobilizing revenue to finance crucial government projects and the opportunity costs of leaving funds dormant.

Accountability needed

The former officials who held an opposing view stressed the need to hold PhilHealth’s leadership to account for the agency’s inefficiency rather than deprive Filipinos of essential healthcare funds.

State health insurer PhilHealth must take immediate and effective action to use the excess funds for the benefit of its members, the ex-Cabinet secretaries stressed.

Among the signatories to the statement were former socioeconomic planning secretaries Cielito Habito and Ernesto Pernia, former budget secretary Florencio Abad, former health secretary Enrique Ona, former tourism secretary Alberto Aldaba Lim, former education secretary Edilberto de Jesus, former Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas deputy governor Diwa Guinigundo, former National Anti-Poverty Commission secretary Joel Rocamora, and former PhilHealth president and CEO Alexander Padilla.

The paper also rejected a trade-off between economic growth through infrastructure and social programs versus public health, stating that every peso diverted from PhilHealth affects those lacking access to healthcare.

The former officials took the stand that funding for other programs should originate from general appropriations and not by sweeping up excess funds from government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs).

The shortfalls in the national budget were caused by the insertion of pork barrel allocations in the 2024 General Appropriations Act, which displaced essential priority projects.

Slick maneuver

Last March, the Department of Finance (DoF) issued Circular 003-2024 directing GOCCs to remit their excess funds back to the Treasury to allow the government to fund unprogrammed appropriations.

The DoF then proceeded to recover the “excess funds” of P89.9 billion from PhilHealth and P110 billion from the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp.

Insertions in the 2024 budget of mostly pet projects of Congress members dislodged items in the budget that were relegated to the portion that the government would have to search for financing for.

“These ‘crucial government projects’ were placed by the members of the congressional bicameral conference committee under the unprogrammed appropriations of the 2024 budget. Unprogrammed appropriations implied that these projects were not a priority and may be funded only if there was surplus revenue,” said University of the Philippines School of Economics professor Cielo Magno.