Garin: Unused DOH project, vaccine funds prompted shift to medical aid

House Deputy Speaker Janette Garin defended the decision of the House of Representatives to restructure the budget of the Department of Health (DOH) through increased funding for its assistance programs, arguing that government funds can not be left sitting dormant in a department.

The lawmaker recalled the budget hearings that were conducted at the lower chamber with the DOH, wherein it was disclosed that the agency was slow when it came to the implementation of funds allocated to the Health Facilities Enhancement Program (HFEP).

Garin said that a particular factor that affected the use of the earmarked budget was the need for project documents to undergo multiple levels of approval before it was approved.

“The documents keep going back and forth. The [local government unit] submits it to the regional office, the regional office then sends it back like ping-pong, it will be brought to the central office, then it will be returned again,” she explained.

“In other words, the system is the problem because that bureaucracy prohibits the immediate implementation of the programs,” she added.

It is worth noting that HFEP was allocated P4.45 billion under the 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP), funding that was reduced and re-allocated by the House.

Garin would note that the issue has been raised to the secretary of the DOH and that they were waiting for the agency to formulate simplified guidelines when it came to the submission of required documents.

She admitted that the change could not simply happen overnight, and that it would take some time for the funding of hospital projects to be increased similar to what was previously proposed by the executive.

Aside from the underutilization of funds when it came to the DOH’s infrastructure program, the lawmaker also cited the lack of use for the budget that was allocated for vaccines against the flu and pneumonia.

Garin, a former Health secretary, said that the department had yet to spend vaccine funds that it received for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, with the agency only beginning to use the funding in recent weeks.

“The vaccines they bought in the past weeks and those they will continue to buy, the delivery will actually be at the end of this year and will spill over to the whole of 2027,” she said.

With both concerns at hand, the House decided to structure the budget of the DOH in a manner that doubled the allocation for the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP).

During the hearing of the Budget Amendments and Review Subcommittee, MAIFIP got a P24.2 billion budget boost which pushed its total proposed funding to P48.2 billion under the House’s version of the 2027 budget.

For Garin, the allocation was “actually hitting two birds with one stone” as it was her belief that the government was better off allocating funds in a way that immediately reached patients.

“The fund will be used by patients as payments for hospitals. The hospital will use that fund to increase its staff, to buy additional equipment, and to fix their facilities,” she said.

The lawmaker downplayed claims that the budget shift had weakened healthcare services, noting that actually providing services to patients was more important than large allocations in the national budget.

“If you put it into the medical assistance program, every patient that gets sick can use that to pay immediately and they can use it as retained income,” Garin stressed.

“It’s not true that it is a big blow to the health sector,” she added.