The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) assured on Tuesday there will be enough funds implement the recently signed Universal Healthcare law.
PhilHealth acting president Roy Ferrer clarified during a press briefing, that PhilHealth only lacks P22 billion to fund the implementation of UHC law and not P170 billion.
“There had been an appropriation of P18 billion, this is additional to the GAA, so there’s only P22 billion lacking, most likely we’ll get this from the sin taxes on tobacco and alcohol,” he said.
They are also confident in providing financial assistance to all its members especially after netting an income of P11.6 billion in 2018.
PhilHealth executive vice president Ruben Basa said the 2018 income is a complete turnaround from their 2017 net income of P237 million.
“We recorded a total of P32.5 billion in premium income, earned solid returns in our investments as evidenced by P5.1 billion windfall from government securities, and our total investment portfolio is at PHP149 billion while our reserve fund is at P97 billion at the close of 2018,” Basa added.
They were also able to reduce turnaround time to 20 days from last year’s 68-day average because of the e-Claims system which expedites the process in verifying the benefit eligibility of members, their status of claims and remove costs for physical transport and supplies in claims submission.
Meanwhile, Ferrer denied the debt claims of several private hospitals against PhilHealth and said that it might be the “bad claims which PhilHealth cannot pay”.
“Noong early part of 2018 we released P2 billion benefits payouts weekly at noong latter part po P3 billion, so I don’t think may utang sa private hospitals,” he added.
(During the early part of 2018, we realeased P2 billion benefits payouts weekly and in the latter part, P3 billion so I don’t think there are debts in private hospitals.) — Aileen Cerrudo
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