PhilHealth’s ghost beneficiaries

Stupid, stupid, stupid! That’s all anyone with some brain in his head can say. The news, “Are they dead or alive? 5K members aged 130 are in PhilHealth database” (8/4/20) — and that “nobody knows if they are dead or still alive” because there is nothing in PhilHealth’s database to show if they died already and so they continue to enjoy the benefits — got us falling off the edge of our seat so early in the morning.

Counting out biblical figures who lived hundreds of years (Methuselah, 969 years; Jared, 962; Noah, 950; Adam, 930; et al.), who lives that long (130 years!) nowadays? Ghost beneficiaries, anyone? No wonder billions of pesos are lost, or worse, end up in the pockets of scalawags!

There were 5,000 RED FLAGS fluttering like crazy and no one in PhilHealth wondered about them? PhilHealth has branches all over the archipelago. Has it ever occurred to PhilHealth president Ricardo Morales to get his people off their butts and do some legwork (assuming PhilHealth has their addresses?) to check if those “undead” members are really still alive and kicking? They would most certainly have found, to their “disbelief,” that all of them had long been in graves within their own barangay, city, or province.

That would have been a lot less expensive, as those trips are just part of their day’s work. Instead, Morales is asking Congress to shell out more billions in cash infusion so he can have PhilHealth’s database show more “intelligence” — apparently because he and his people no longer have any.

Stephen L. Monsanto
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