I’ve been flooded with questions not only from the media but also from affected sectors about the decreasing amount of financial assistance being extended by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to poor and indigent patients.
Under the Individual Medical Assistance Program (Imap), the flagship project of PCSO, the top 3 requests for financial assistance by indigent patients are hospital bills, medicines and cancer treatments.
Data from the Charity Assistance Department show that there has been a substantial increase in the number of accommodated patients and the amount spent in the first semester of 2018 for its Imap operation.
The Commission on Audit (COA) flagged this as “overutilization.”
Overutilization means overspending, or spending more than what is allowed in the approved budget. Thus, brace for the notice of disallowance. Worst, any government official doing this could face administrative and criminal charges.
In the first semester alone, the PCSO has served 236,547 patients, spending for them P4.6 billion, compared to the 184,907 patients served with P3.5 billion spending in the same period last year.
It is interesting to note the increasing number of patients seeking financial assistance from the PCSO. In 2016 there were 319,091 patients served with a total spending of P7.9 billion. A year after that, in 2017, a total of P8.086 billion was spent for 415,564 patients.
COA has already pressed the warning button. The overspending must be stopped. Now the question: Who will continue helping the increasing number of patients seeking financial assistance for their hospital bills, chemo treatments and dialysis treatments?
With their hands tied, the PCSO Board came out with Resolution No. 0256 Series of 2018 that suspended the implementation of the Imap-General case rates. This is in compliance with COA’s observation of overutilization.
From January to July, the PCSO generated a total revenue of P35.9 billion from its various lottery games, such as Lotto, Sweepstakes and Small Town Lottery, a 24.83-percent increase from the P28.8 billion earned in the same period last year.
Before the Board decided to suspend the Imap-General case rates in connection with the COA observation, the PCSO was releasing more than P20 million a day to its 63 branches nationwide, including the National Capital Region. That amount has been reduced to P4.1 million a day.
Consequently, the number of patients being served everyday at the Lung Center of the Philippines in Quezon City was gradually
reduced—from 300 to 250 to 150 to 100 and, just lately, to only 75 patients a day.
While other government agencies were being criticized or even chastised for underspending or not using their appropriated budget, the PCSO, whose mission is to bring charity to the poor, is being handcuffed for overutilization or overspending for the poor people it was mandated to serve.
It’s no surprise that more and more people, especially the indigents, are getting angry.
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