Fixing the P6.352-trillion budget for 2025 that was mangled by the bicameral conference committee now falls on the shoulders of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. through the exercise of his veto power.
Under the Constitution, the President has the authority to return the General Appropriations Act (GAA) that Congress has approved through the veto process. The Charter provides that the President can either approve or veto a bill.
If the President vetoes the GAA or specific provisions within it, the bill is returned to Congress, and the legislature has the option to override the veto with a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Congress may also revise the bill based on the President’s feedback and resubmit it. This process ensures a system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches.
Returning the bill to Congress has become a call from budget watchdogs due to the huge insertions totaling P500 billion in unprogrammed items and the deleted P74 billion subsidy for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), which would subvert the implementation of the Universal Healthcare (UHC) Act.
Associate professor Cielo Magno of the UP School of Economics said the bastardization of the PhilHealth budget next year was a violation of the law and the principle of health insurance.
If the government subsidy to PhilHealth is removed, the burden of providing healthcare to those who cannot afford it falls on the members of the insurance fund, who are the salaried workers.
Magno said that she agreed with the assessment that nothing will change if the subsidy is removed “since the performance of the agency now is truly disappointing.”
Despite the UHC law mandating free services for the health upkeep of citizens, the majority of Filipinos shun consulting doctors or hospital confinement, frightened by out-of-pocket expenses.
“If the insurance liability of PhilHealth is factored in, the P600 billion in reserve funds will not be enough to cover it,” said the former undersecretary of finance.
PhilHealth, in keeping an insurance fund, has current and anticipated payables that should be covered by its standby money.
The reserve fund is where PhilHealth draws from to pay maturing premiums and obligations with hospitals.
Thus, Magno said, “There should be a substantial reserve fund to cover its insurance liability,” adding that the reserve fund is not surplus cash.
“Filipinos have out-of-pocket expenses of about 50 percent on hospitalization, which is the highest in the region,” according to Magno.
She lamented “that Congress has been demolishing institutional services such as those provided by PhilHealth and had raised the funding for those programs that promote patronage politics.”
If the problem is poor management of PhilHealth, then the solution should not be to deny poor people access to their health needs, Magno indicated.
While several regular items in the budget were slashed, unprogrammed appropriations have increased.
Several items were bumped from the budget of agencies, primarily in the Department of Public Works and Highways, to make way for the funding of pet projects of members of Congress.
These items were classified as “standby appropriations,” which have funding dependent on the availability of additional revenues or through borrowings.
In the 2025 national budget, Congress allotted more than P500 billion of the standby funds through its closed-door bicameral committee deliberations.
The usual practice of the panel is, for instance, switching legislators’ pet projects with legitimate infrastructure and social programs, foreign-assisted projects, including several big-ticket items relegated into unprogrammed appropriations.
The usual excuse is that unprogrammed appropriations would only be disbursed subject to fund availability. However, a new provision in the 2024 GAA ensures that funds will be readily accessible by the Department of Finance, which can sweep “excess funds” of government-owned or controlled corporations such as PhilHealth.
The use of the DoF in raking in funds is a roundabout way of skirting the Supreme Court ruling, resurrecting the pork barrel system — a budget monstrosity that should stay dead and buried.