The Senate has recently included a provision in the 2017 national budget to cancel the need for patients in hospitals to present their PhilHealth card as a condition to avail themselves of the health insurer’s benefits.
Senator Ralph Recto said in his press release that the scrapping of the “No PhilHealth ID, No benefits” policy is one of the provisions that the Senate had created to ensure health coverage for everyone.
The budget provision, under 2017 General Appropriations Bill, stated that “No Filipino, whether a PhilHealth member or not, shall be denied of PhilHealth benefits in attaining the universal coverage; PhilHealth identification card is not necessary for the availing the benefits” and that President Duterte is expected to sign the bill before the end of the month.
The major PhilHealth-related initiative, Recto said, was the one pushed by Senator Loren Legarda.
However, the Senate found a backlog “which will appropriate P3 billion to pay for the insurance premiums of an estimated 8 million uninsured Filipinos” was discovered during their course of budget deliberation.
The P3 billion Senate infusion sponsored by Senator Loren Legarda “will close the last mile in the health insurance,” Recto said.
“The number of people covered by PhilHealth increased yearly. The individuals were included, including self-paying or those paying voluntarily, reached 78 million by 2010. President Aquino, on the other hand, added 20 million new enrollees, and increased the paying members to 45 million, including the remaining the previous grantees and expanded the benefits,” he said.
As a result of the Senate augmentation, the budget for PhilHealth social insurance program had been raised to P53.2 billion.
It will cover 15.4 million needy families, including 3.3 to 5.5 million senior citizens, and 48,000 individuals under the government peace and reconciliation ‘PAMANA’ program, and the remaining 8 million uninsured people.
Recto pointed out that the inclusion of senior citizens “under the Medicare umbrella” was made under Republic Act 10645, the 2014 Recto-authored law mandating automatic PhilHealth coverage for people ages 60-year-old and above.
He added that the “No ID” rule in RA 10645 for seniors seeking medical services is being expanded to cover everyone in the insurance.
Government’s subsidy to PhilHealth, meanwhile, is “booked separately” from the Department of Health’s (DOH’s) budget.
The DOH appropriations for 2017 is P96.33 billion.
Recto mentioned that the inputs in the crafting of “health-care-for-all provisions” in the budget came from Senate health committee chairman Risa Hontiveros and Sen. Sonny Angara who defended the DOH budget in plenary.
