When the government told the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation or PhilHealth to keep functioning as if nothing had happened despite receiving “zero pesos” in the national budget, something should have been obvious but somehow it wasn’t.

You can’t run a kitchen without ingredients, nor can you run a healthcare system without funding.

Tell a struggling mother to feed her family three meals a day with no budget for food. She’d undoubtedly stare at you in disbelief, and rightly so. Because no matter how resourceful she is, she can’t create meals out of thin air. No matter how hard she stretches her hands, empty pockets can’t put food on the table.

Now, replace mother with PhilHealth and food with healthcare. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s statement that services must remain “unhampered” despite zero funding — is just as unrealistic and a dangerous fantasy. Where is the money supposed to come from? Magic? Good intentions? The kindness of underpaid doctors?

Just think of the real-world consequences. PhilHealth isn’t a charity but a lifeline for millions. When it runs out of funds, which it will do because math exists, what will happen to patients needing dialysis or chemotherapy? How about mothers relying on maternity packages? And the ordinary workers who’ve paid premiums for years, expecting coverage in return?

The answer is — they will suffer. Hospitals will turn them away. Bills will pile up. People will die from treatable illnesses — not because medicine failed, but because the system was set up to fail them.

This is not just about PhilHealth. There is a pattern of expecting miracles from underfunded institutions.

How often have we heard that teachers were told to educate the youth, but there’s no budget for chalk? Doctors are urged to heal the sick, but overcrowded hospitals are sickening. Local government units are told to solve flooding, but disaster funds are slashed, and flood control projects fail.

At some point we have to ask: Is this incompetence, or is it deliberate? Because telling an agency to function without money isn’t governance. Clearly, it’s gaslighting.

When a government demands results from an unprioritized healthcare system, it is like planting a tree without water and then blaming the roots for not growing.

The truth is simple: If you don’t pay for healthcare, you don’t get healthcare. If that’s the policy, don’t be surprised when people ask: “What exactly are our taxes paying for?”

When funding vanishes, real people bear the cost. Patients will be turned away or forced to pay out-of-pocket for treatments that should be covered; hospitals will drown in unpaid claims, leading to shortages of supplies, overworked staff, and longer waits; doctors and nurses, already exhausted and underpaid, will face even more pressure — because when the system fails, frontline workers are left holding the pieces.

This is not hypothetical because it is already happening. Stories of patients being denied dialysis, surgeries postponed, and families mortgaging homes for hospital bills are common — a zero budget guarantees more of the same — just worse.

Admitting the problem will not make a lesser government. If PhilHealth is broke, say so — and fix it. Cut corruption, not budgets, because more than 110 million lives depend on healthcare.

It’s about time to stop pretending that resilience replaces resources. While we take pride in Filipinos’ resourcefulness, we shouldn’t have to beg for basic services like healthcare.