The Senate, prompted by Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s exposé, moved Monday to open a joint inquiry into alleged assorted anomalies involving Philhealth and the
Department of Health (DOH).
Senate President Vicente Sotto III, acting on a motion of Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, promptly referred Lacson’s findings for public hearings to be conducted jointly by the Blue Ribbon, chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon, and the Health Committee, chaired by Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go.
Taking the floor during Monday’s session, Lacson reminded the Senate that the Duterte administration is poised to fully implement Republic Act 11223, or the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act, which, he said, will give a full spectrum of health services to all Filipinos.
“With it comes a big chunk of our annual budget,” Lacson said, adding: “The budget appropriated for this law is pegged at P257 billion for this year. In fact, the National Health Insurance Program, in which every Filipino shall be a member under the UHC, had appropriations of P52.2 billion and P60.6 billion in 2017 and 2018, respectively. For this year, P67.35 billion has been allocated for the program.”
The Senator reminded that government “cannot afford to lose P1 from policy failures, insurance frauds, and conflict of interests.” Besides, he added, “these are the country’s PhilHealth and Department of Health that we are talking about, not PhilWealth and Department of Wealth.”
Still, Lacson said, he had refused to believe that “the agency is rotten to the core.”
In fact, the senator said he heard of many honest and well-meaning PhilHealth officers and employees who braved the odds and blew the whistle on these various anomalies in the corporation. “But they all found themselves thrown under the bus and harassed with concocted, fabricated offenses,” the senator said. “They may now find comfort under the new leadership. I urge them to report everything they know and present their evidence to their new PhilHealth president.”
Lacson added that “amid these shenanigans, it behooves public servants, let alone the secretary of health, to rid himself of conflict of interest and put the interest of the people above everybody else. Nothing else will suffice. Falling short of this will compromise his office, principles and integrity.”
“I speak of the disease that besets our health sector, starting off from the state-run firm that provides public-health insurance and health- care services for all Filipino citizens—the corrupt and corrupting system of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or PhilHealth,” the senator said.
He noted that while President Duterte acted with firmness and dispatch by assigning retired Army Maj. Gen. Ricardo “Dick” Morales, whose reputation as a no-nonsense and principled military officer precedes him, the senator admitted he “still finds the need to expose shenanigans within PhilHealth.”
“PhilHealth is ‘bleeding dry,’ and the Commission on Audit [COA] has raised red flags to call our attention,” the senator said.
Lacson lamented that “it seems to me that year in, year out, its financial deficit spirals out of control” noting that from 2013 to 2017, the net operating income of PhilHealth continues to be at the negative level: P5 billion in 2013; P1.8 billion in 2014; P5.7 billion in 2015; P6.1 billion in 2016; and P10.5 billion in 2017.
In a privileged speech, the senator disclosed findings that the fund viability, membership, collections and investments of the agency are “not looking good, and the PhilHealth’s Actuarial Valuation Report of 2016 shows us a clear picture.
The report exhorts, and I quote, “PhilHealth will go through difficult times and will encounter crisis if the recommendations will not be implemented,” Lacson said, adding that the agency’s performance is also dismal, noting that its 2017’s Performance Scorecard shows that it gained an overall score of only 47.82 percent from the Governance Commission for government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCC) Scoreboard.
“This is disturbingly lower than the target score of at least 90 percent for its appointive members to be granted Performance-Based Incentives.”
According to Lacson, “more disturbing is the fact that the GOCC scored PhilHealth’s prosecution rate at 0 percent; arbitration rate at 0.14 percent and claims processing rate at 0 percent. Ironically, PhilHealth’s collection efficiency rate, meaning its ability to collect contributions from its members—is quite impressive at 79 percent.” He added that “this is pain in the chest, especially of paying members of PhilHealth and that would include people in this hall and the gallery, and the rest of the 18,207,555 Filipinos who pay mandatory contributions every month.”