No justification for PhilHealth premium increase

For 2016, PhilHealth announced that monthly contributions may be increased due to additional benefits it will accord senior citizens and indigent patients. PhilHealth keeps on deceiving the public to justify the impending premium hike.

Why would it propose an increase in monthly contributions to provide additional benefits for senior citizens and indigent patients when, already, a large chunk of the health budget amounting to P43.8 billion is allocated for PhilHealth in 2016?

For the record, PhilHealth is not the answer to the Filipino people’s health-related woes as is deceptively assured by President Aquino and presidential candidate Mar Roxas’ “daang matuwid”—an overhyped administration policy but nothing more than an empty rhetoric. It is a vehicle for patronage politics and fails to reach all those who are in dire need of healthcare.

On the other hand, PhilHealth accounts for a mere fraction of a member’s hospital bill, while Filipino “households continue to bear the heaviest burden in terms of spending for their health needs as “private out-of-pocket” payments accounted for 56.3 percent of the total health expenditure in 2013, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s  Philippine National Health Accounts  report released on Aug. 4, 2015.

Increased out-of-pocket expenses in a national health insurance system has brought more burden than ease among Filipinos—a result of a collapsing healthcare sytem that has long been taken over by big foreign and local private/corporate business interests.

PhilHealth is not the answer to the public’s burden on health. Health expenditures should be shouldered by the State and given directly to public health facilities and providers so that health care can be free, progressive and comprehensive.

—ELEANOR A. JARA, MD, executive director, Council for Health and Development, [email protected]