Securing the 2025 national budget before the end of the year is essential, but even more important is ensuring that public funds are not misappropriated. This was the message President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. conveyed after pledging to thoroughly review the 2025 national budget amid concerns about some of its items, particularly the disposition of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for the coming year.

Mr. Marcos expressed his intention to go through the details of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB), especially those he described as “worrisome elements” of the spending plan. The details are not yet clear,” the President indicated.

In the same breath, the Chief Executive stated that he would do his best to sign the General Appropriations Act (GAA) before Christmas, giving him a week to complete the review.

With the unprecedented violation of the budget in the bicameral conference committee as a result of the 11th-hour insertions that did not go through any deliberation in Congress, the target of harmonious holidays may not transpire at all.

Last week, the bicameral conference committee approved the P6.352-trillion 2025 budget bill but what stuck out after the bicam presented it is the P373 billion in insertions that bloated the unprogrammed appropriations.

The insertions may have mangled the well-crafted budget from the Executive. Among the items that are expected to be reviewed by the Palace are the cuts undertaken to make way for pork barrel insertions.

For instance, funding for state universities and colleges was affected with an estimated 4.7-percent slash.

The premier University of the Philippines incurred a massive P2.1-billion budget cut, considered the biggest in nine years.

Fresh in his post, Education Secretary Sonny Angara, previously sitting among the senators, expressed dismay over the budget cut, particularly the deletion of the P10-billion computerization program for 2025.

The project is direly needed to improve the holding of distance learning, the success of which is always confronted by slow connections.

What raised a howl was the removal of the P74-billion state subsidy to PhilHealth which was earmarked for those who are not financially capable of maintaining the monthly premiums for the healthcare system.

The rationale was that PhilHealth has a huge reserve fund which could be as high as P600 billion. Budget watchdogs, however, defended this, considering the huge insurance liability of the agency.

Moreover, the full implementation of the Universal Health Care (UHC) law relies on PhilHealth’s efficiency in applying funds to expand its services.

More than removing the subsidy, the bigger anomaly is that PhilHealth had accumulated a colossal “reserve fund” that sits idly in the bank while Filipinos suffer from the cost of medicines and hospitalization.

Drawing from the reserve fund reduces the pool of contributions from members which may affect payouts to hospitals.

Hospitals have refused to participate in PhilHealth programs because of the huge problems associated with these, particularly in the collection of dues.

Thus, it is illogical for Senator Grace Poe to say that the “reserve fund” of P600 billion will just “go to waste.”

The UHC Act provides that a “premium subsidy” for indirect contributors, who are the indigents and senior citizens, “shall be gradually adjusted and included annually in the GAA.” Now it was removed courtesy of the bicam.

The senator, according to a budget expert, had confused the reserve fund for surplus funds.

The National Health Insurance Act defines reserve funds as that drawn from each year’s “accumulated revenues not needed to meet the cost of the current year’s expenditures.”

“Insurance contract liabilities” of PhilHealth, or the liabilities that PhilHealth expects to pay in the future to fulfill its commitments to its members of about P1.15 trillion are almost twice the current reserve funds.

The Chief Executive should thoroughly comb the 2025 budget proposal that the bicam had cobbled up as it is filled with pork and institutionalizes corruption and patronage.