Sen. Franklin Drilon yesterday urged the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to tap its P90.7-billion reserve fund to settle the hospital claims amounting to P1.4 billion.
The chairman of the Senate finance committee took note of reports on supposed “very slow pace” by which the state health insurer would service claims from hospitals even PhilHealth officials admitted that its reserve funds as of July this year is over P90 billion.
“They have a reserve fund of about P90 billion which is way above what is required by law,” Drilon said, noting that the health insurer is mandated to keep its reserve level at about P30 billion which is equivalent to two years of compensable fees.
During the budget hearing of the Health department, PhilHealth president and CEO (chief executive officer) Rey Aquino said the current balance of PhilHealth to hospital claims stood at P1.4 billion.
Drilon said that the national health insurer should utilize the reserve fund to reduce PhilHealth premiums, increase benefits or expand the coverage, particularly to the poorest sectors of the society.
He said PhilHealth should come up with a scheme to utilize the pooled funds to improve the health services in the country without jacking up current premium rates.
Drilon said that he has requested a separate hearing of the PhilHealth budget to discuss the problem with hospital claims.
“We have required a separate presentation by PhilHealth because we have received a lot of reports about the very, very slow pace by which the PhilHealth would service the claims from hospitals,” he added.
In a related development, Drilon also called on the executive to ensure that the modernization of state-run hospitals included under the public-private partnership (PPP) framework being pushed as a flagship program by the Aquino administration would not affect services to indigent patients.
While PPP could jumpstart the upgrading of state hospitals which have been neglected in the past years, Drilon said the government should ensure that the project should not result to higher fees, especially to the poor.
“I would like to emphasize that any joint venture agreement with a prospective partner in the private sector must not result in the diminution of services to the indigents which these regional hospitals are performing,” he said.
“I cannot defend this administration if these PPP projects will result in higher costs to our indigents. That one would be unforgivable. I can understand the lack of resources but we should not get into ventures to sacrifice the services to the poorest sectors of our society,” Drilon said as he expressed full support to the proposal to help modernize the country’s state hospitals.
Hospitals included in the modernization program are Cagayan Valley Medical Center, Veterans Regional Hospital, Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center, Region I Medical Center, Paulino Garcia Memorial Research and Medical Center, Jose B. Lingad Memorial Medical Center, Batangas Regional Hospital, Bicol Medical Center (Naga City), Bicol Regional Training and Teaching Hospital (Legaspi City), Quezon Memorial Hospital, Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center, Rizal Medical Center, Amang Rodriguez Medical Center, San Lazaro Hospital, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center, Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital, Western Visayas Medical Center, Samar Provincial Hospital, Northern Mindanao Medical Center, Davao Medical Center, Zamboanga City Medical Center, Cotabato Regional and Medical Center, and CARAGA Regional Hospital.
“Conceptually, PPP is probably the way to go about rehabilitating our hospitals,” he added.
A total of P3 billion is included in next year’s proposed P1.816 trillion national budget to frontload rehabilitation of public hospitals in the country, which would be used as government equity for the modernization of 25 regional hospitals identified by the Health department under the flagship program PPP framework.
For this year, about P12.5 billion is allocated for the PPP program and another P22 billion is included in next year’s outlay for PPP projects. However, none of the P12.5 billion allotted this year has been spent. –Angie M. Rosales, Daily Tribune
Invoke Article 33 of the ILO constitution
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