Herbosa pounds PhilHealth management

It appears that the pressure is on the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to finally implement reform measures.

Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa has joined the clamor for the leadership of the state-run PhilHealth, which is under the Department of Health, to get its act together after it failed to fully utilize its budget which resulted in P600 billion in reserve funds.

Herbosa cited the need to fix PhilHealth.

“This fiscal discipline, I think, is part of an armamentarium, where you can fix management and say, no, the legislator knows that what you’re supposed to do is to pay the health benefits of your members. And if you’re not doing that and putting the money in the bank instead, why should we reward you for failing?” he said.

“The people that have been there in management, they’ve been there for years. So management needs to straighten this out, follow the directives and the strategies directed by the board,” said Herbosa.

“It’s about time to use that excess money, which the government also gave, to use now for continuing the implementation of the Universal Health Care and for the indirect members,” he said.

Half of the revenue from tobacco excise taxes is allocated to PhilHealth and the improvement of health facilities to ensure full coverage of all Filipinos under the National Insurance Program.

The highest collection was in 2021, reaching P176 billion. However, this declined to P160 billion in 2022 and further to P135 billion in 2023, which were still substantial numbers.

Despite this funding, Filipinos continue to face high insurance premiums without full coverage, raising concerns about the agency’s ability to effectively utilize the additional funds from the tobacco excise taxes.

Herbosa confirmed that the agency’s utilization rate for its 2024 budget was a mere 61 percent, below government standards.

He said the bigger issue with PhilHealth involves the rules on how much it should save. “I think PhilHealth acts like other corporations in that they feel that they should spend less.”

“Private corporations want to spend less, but PhilHealth should not be that way. From day one, I said, PhilHealth should have rules, let’s say, it should have only 20-percent savings. Everything else should be spent,” he said.