Mendicancy culture

Mendicancy culture | Daily Tribune

A wealth of wisdom and a clear path to justice can be found in the Supreme Court justices’ opinions related to invalidating the collusion between the bicameral conference committee and the Department of Finance to seize P89.9 billion in reserves from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.

Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, in the opinion he wrote, said that justifying the transfer of the funds on the ground of PhilHealth’s alleged “spending inefficiency” is misguided and shows a lack of compassion on the part of those who hold that view.

Then Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, in making his pitch for the DoF directive for government-owned and -controlled corporations to surrender excess funds to the Bureau of the Treasury, said the vast amounts siphoned from PhilHealth would be rechanneled, as these funds were idle.

In the same vein, former Senate President Chiz Escudero and his frequent ally, Senator Grace Poe, defended the removal of a P76 billion subsidy for PhilHealth in the 2025 budget as a penalty for its inefficient operations.

Escudero said the defunding was meant to sanction the agency for its mismanagement and failure to fulfill its mandate under the Universal Health Care Act.

As chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee, Poe echoed Escudero’s rationale, arguing that PhilHealth’s substantial reserves make additional subsidies unnecessary and wasteful.

Leonen said the actions of the “representatives of our people” sought to impose a managerial and economic disincentive on PhilHealth for its inability to deliver health services by further cutting off its resources.

“Instead of revamping PhilHealth’s leadership or management, they cut funding, letting the same flawed system persist and worsen,” Leonen said.

He described the extraction of reserve funds from PhilHealth in 2024 as a “misguided and unkind application of leadership principles or economic efficiency.”

“It reveals a troubling lack of compassion rather than a view that the government should focus on supporting genuine solutions that address the real needs of our people,” he noted.

Leonen cited the long lines of citizens begging in the offices of senators, members of the House of Representatives, local government officials, or the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office for funding to pay their medical bills or those of their loved ones.

“We have a government that has reduced so many of our people to degrading forms of mendicancy,” Leonen lamented.

He pointed to the Constitution and the Universal Health Care Act, both of which envision dignity for people in access to healthcare.

In the past three years, however, funding for institutionalized systems to address poverty, such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and PhilHealth funds mandated to implement the UHC Act, has been diverted to programs that rely on political patronage to secure social support.

“I am sure that this is not what social justice and the fundamental respect for human dignity are all about,” Leonen said, referring to the promotion of dependence on elected officials.

Several other Supreme Court justices expressed a similar view that the manipulation of the budget to place the people’s welfare at the mercy of politicians must not be allowed to prosper.

“I am hopeful that we can do better,” Leonen said, appealing to government leaders.

Piercing through the callousness of those who wield power is easier said than done, however.