MANILA, January 12, 2012-“There’s no need to impose a 160-percent increase in the members’ contributions to Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) considering its enormous cash reserves and huge subsidies from government,” Senator Ralph G. Recto said, explaining that PhilHealth could achieve viability and attain efficacy in its delivery of services without having to impose another burden to its members, which is essentially another form of payroll tax.
He cited deductions for withholding tax, SSS/GSIS, and Pag-IBIG, PhilHealth contributions are also automatically deducted from the payroll of workers.
Recto-who chairs the Senate ways and means committee and sits as senior vice-chair of the Senate budget panel said that PhilHealth may always decide to tap its retained earnings, which have peaked to P110 billion in 2010, to bankroll expansion of services and benefits such as reducing out of pocket expenses of members, adding that aside from sitting on its retained earnings that could eclipse by two-fold the entire budget of the Department of Health (DOH), PhilHealth is also a consistent top recipient of state subsidies.
“PhilHealth was among the top agencies that have received the biggest slice of the P45.205 billion subsidies given out to state-owned corporations from January to November last 2011,” adding that in the first half of last year, PhilHealth already racked up P5.1 billion in subsidies from government.
The same GOCC is expected to receive the biggest part of this year’s programmed GOCC subsidy of P18.7 billion.
PhilHealth stands to receive P1.5 billion in the 2012 budget to cover premium payment arrears covering 2.9 million indigent families on top of the subsidies.
“What happened to these subsidies, and what are you doing with your billions in retained earnings?” Recto asked.
He said that the planned hike in premium payments would hurt struggling small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which have to contend with a buffet of regulatory compliance like membership in SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG.
“And we’re making it worse by increasing the premium payments of their workers, which are shouldered in part by them,” Recto said, adding that even local government units (LGUs) would be adversely affected by the move and as a result, create havoc in their fiscal planning for this year.
He said job generation would also be stifled as a result of the increase in PhilHealth premiums since companies will have second thoughts hiring more workers for fear of bloating their operating budget.
The senator said that he was not aware of any consultation held on that matter. “We are slashing the IRA of LGUs this year and here we are, making the life of LGUs more difficult by increasing the premiums of PhilHealth members,” he explained.
