Ona wants Philhealth dues hiked to 3.5%

HEALTH Secretary Enrique Ona on Monday recommended increasing the employees’ contribution to Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to 3.5 percent of their salaries from 2.5 percent now to expand the company’s insurance coverage.

The increase would help Philhealth subsidize its poor members and make its coverage universal, Ona told the technical working group of the Senate’s committee on health and demography.

“Besides, health care should be significantly higher than housing,” Ona said in comparing members’ contributions to Philhealth against their contributions to the government’s Pag-IBIG housing program.

Ona said the increase in premium payments would apply only to Philhealth members earning P25,000 a year and not to bus and jeepney drivers, mom-and-pop store owners and the self-employed.

Philhealth’s members now consist of 318,853 private employees, 14,776 government employees, and 3.62 million individually paying members.

Their contributions range from P50 for those receiving P4,999.99 and below and as much as P375 for those receiving P 30,000 and above.

At the same hearing, former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez Jr. criticized an attempt by the government to exclude the insurance coverage of women delivering their fifth and subsequent babies.

“This is anti-poor,” Romualdez said. It was the poorer members of society who traditionally had more children and the ones who had a higher child mortality rate. Rey T. Salita, Manila Standard Today