CASINO gamblers, lotto bettors, smokers and alcohol drinkers are being lined up among major funding sources under the multibillion-peso Universal Health Care bill that President Duterte is expected to promptly sign into law as soon as its final version is ratified by Congress.
“The tax on vices will fund the good virtue of health for all,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto said on Thursday as the Senate and the House of Representatives inched closer to ratifying the awaited legislation when the lawmakers, now on a four-week recess, reconvene their regular sessions on November 12.
According to Recto, multiple sources of finances underpin the Senate-approved Universal Health Care (UHC) bill “so that its many mandates will not go unfunded.”
The Senate President Pro Tempore confirmed that among the government revenues that will be funnelled to UHC are “portions of its multibillion-peso casino and lotto income, plus ‘sin’ tax collections.”
He likened the UHC bill to a doctor’s medicine prescription, adding: “Walang silbi kung walang pambili. [It is useless if you don’t have money to buy the medicine].”
Recto said this was why the UHC bill also earmarked “a raft of funding sources,” noting that “one enemy of health care is anemic funding.”
In a statement, the senator listed potential funding sources, including the incremental sin-tax collections from tobacco and alcohol products, that he said, “are now pledged to UHC.”
Based on his computation, total sin-tax collections added up to P145.3 billion in 2016, and P187 billion in 2017. Of these, P64.2 billion in 2016, and P66.8 billion in 2017 were deemed incremental collections,” Recto added.
Moreover, he listed 50 percent of the national share from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) income that will likewise go to UHC, adding: “so will 40 percent of the charity fund of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.”
The senator sees the assignment of casino revenues for cure as a “winning combination,” saying it was “better for our health institutions to direct where funds must go than for state gaming bodies to triage who will receive help or not.”
At the same time, Recto clarified the proposed earmarks are on top of regular annual appropriations for the Department of Health, Philippine Health Insurance Corp., and the many mandates and programs under the UHC.
The funding cannot be reduced, he said, as “we are benchmarking the minimum funding requirements.”
The proposed Universal Health Care law, the senator explained, also aims to cure ailments in the public health system as “it addresses all aspects: from financing, to medical manpower, to affordable drugs, to the use of information technology, to the improvement of health facilities, to primary health care, to higher PhilHealth benefits and more.”