THE Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) said it may take three more years to fully implement the Universal Health Care (UHC) law due to lack of funds and personnel.
PhilHealth President and CEO Ricardo C. Morales said this was their estimated period before the government could raise the sufficient funds and recruit the people needed to ensure every Filipino will be covered by PhilHealth.
“PhilHealth cannot implement more than what the budget allows. But what we can do is to organize to be able to implement the universal health care when it happens,” Morales said.
Lower than expected
Last week, the Department of Health (DOH) said it is not ready for the nationwide implementation of the UHC since the government was unable to raise the needed P257 billion fund for it.
Of the proposed budget, PhilHealth was supposed to get P153 billion for UHC for 2020.
“But we were only given P67 billion, so that is a shortfall of P85 billion,” PhilHealth Acting Senior Vice President for Actuary Nerisa Santiago told BusinessMirror in an ambush interview.
She said this was because of projected low “sin” tax collection, particularly for tobacco products, for 2020.
Both DOH and PhilHealth are hoping this funding gap will be addressed once the proposed bill raising alcohol tax and vape products is passed into law.
Initial list
Health officials said an initial list of 33 areas were selected for the “soft” rollout of the UHC next year.
Santiago, however, said the initial list of 33 pilot areas could still be trimmed depending on the readiness of the said locations.
She said the areas are now undergoing assessment to determine if they can implement the UHC in terms of personnel and facilities.
“In case they are assessed to be ready to implement UHC…that is the only time we will calculate how much budget they will be given,” Santiago said.
She said they estimate the implementation of UHC in the 33 areas would cost P40 billion to P50 billion.
The funding of the areas will depend on the site’s historical claims from PhilHealth, case mix, and demographics.
Limited services
During the pilot implementation of UHC next year, Morales said they will also not be able to enforce the dental, mental and emergency services provided by the new legislation.
“We will focus the budget in the area, where it will have the most impact and that happens to be medical health services,” Morales said.
In preparation for the full implementation of UHC, PhilHealth said it will be starting its reorganization of personnel as well as recruitment of additional 1,000 workers by next year.
“We will need to expand because the current compliment of PhilHealth might not be enough to operationalize the UHC considering the numerous changes we would have to implement,” Santiago said.