A collapsing sick society

A collapsing sick society | Daily Tribune

In the social pyramid, the middle class is the stabilizing force — and its continued neglect could prove fatal.

The average working-class family is the backbone of the economy and, collectively, its largest taxpayer. For roughly 10 million Filipinos working overseas, their remittances sustain households back home.

The middle stratum’s ordeal is reflected in an inefficient health system, strained by incompetence and abuse serving the incumbent’s political agenda.

Inside a private hospital, a small sign says everything about the system: “Charge first before requesting medicine.”

It is directed at nurses, not patients. Private hospitals do not offer zero-balance billing. They operate under a different financial reality.

For a five-day hospital stay, the bill can easily reach six digits for routine procedures like treatment, monitoring, and medication.

Families who can afford it feel the strain in the steep erosion of their savings, while those earning just enough are forced to choose between safeguarding their health or leaving it to fate — bahala na, “I leave it to Bathala.”

In some hospitals, families do not just borrow — they pawn.

They leave an ID, a phone, jewelry. Sometimes a laptop. Sometimes a small piece of land — the kind of collateral people hold on to for years because it is the only asset that can be turned into cash fast.

The arrangement is demeaning: Hand something over, get your loved one discharged, and come back when you can pay.

The Philippines has a Universal Health Care (UHC) law. On paper, it is one of the most comprehensive health reform laws the Congress has ever passed. It guarantees automatic membership in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

It promises access to preventive, curative, rehabilitative, and emergency services without financial hardship.

Yet, zero-balance billing applies only to Department of Health-run hospitals and only to patients admitted under basic accommodation. It does not apply to private hospitals nor to emergency room services classified as outpatient care.

When medicines are unavailable, when supplies run out, or when reimbursement delays force hospitals to shift the cost back to the patients, the law becomes useless.

The UHC was effectively emasculated through transactional politics and corruption in government, where slush funds to maintain the survival of those in power receive priority over the public welfare.

It was former Department of Finance chief, now Executive Secretary, Ralph Recto, who scooped P60 billion from PhilHealth and P107 billion from the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) to plug more than P200 billion items in the Unprogrammed Appropriations, through a directive.

Aside from extracting reserve funds, those mandated by law for PhilHealth became tentative.

From 2023 to 2025, the government earmarked P113.44 billion from sin taxes and P106.95 billion from its share of collections from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. for PhilHealth, which oversees the implementation of the Universal Health Care Act.

These funds were not fully released, however, and substantial portions were diverted to parallel health programs rife with patronage.

The UHC has thus become conditional. The law explicitly states that no co-payments should be charged for services rendered in basic or ward accommodations.

When a family chooses a private hospital, often because public ones are overcrowded, understaffed, or inaccessible, they step outside the promise of “zero balance” and into a pay-first system that treats health care as a transaction.

There is also a law that explicitly prohibits hospitals from demanding deposits or advance payments in emergency and severe cases.

Under the strengthened Anti-Hospital Deposit Law, it is unlawful for hospitals and medical clinics, public or private, to require payment as a condition for administering basic emergency care or treatment necessary to prevent death or permanent disability.

The law is unambiguous. Emergency care must come first. Payment comes later.

The result is a system that is theoretically universal but practically fragmented.

Caught in between are the taxpayers, as healthcare remains a leading driver of household debt.