There have been reports that the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) is on the brink of bankruptcy. However, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya denied these reports and assured its 79 million members that Philhealth is financially stable. Andaya even said that the net income of Philhealth doubled from P5 billion in 2001 to P10 billion in 2008. It also has a reserve fund of P63 billion.
“Philhealth is far from bankruptcy,’’ Andaya told reporters in a Malacañang briefing last August 20. Meanwhile, Melinda Mercado, Philhealth SVP for operations agreed with the statement of Andaya. “We’re able to pay premium. It’s strong and stable, don’t worry.”
In a Senate hearing last Aug. 19, Nerissa Santiago, the Philhealth VP for actuary said that the national government owed the government corporation some P19.2 billion unpaid contributions to members. Sen. Loren Legarda, chair of the health committee even said that there is a bill that would provide insurance for Filipinos and wondered how the government racked up such debt that would cause the bankruptcy of Philhealth.
In addition, Andaya clarified that per Philhealth’s computation, the DBM owed P9 billion to the computation. But per DBM’s computation, it owed a smaller amount. “And this is now the subject of talks,’’ he said of the figure. “They have their own computation, we have our own computation.’’
Mercado said that the DBM remitted P388 million in 2006, P85 million in 2007, and some P610 million has been appropriated from the 2009 national budget for release to the corporation. “Those are projections or assumptions, assuming there’s no effort to increase collections,” she said of the reported P19.2 billion arrears by the national government to Philhealth.
The national government pays a counterpart premium to Philhealth for government employees.
