PhilHealth eyes Php94-B payment for healthcare

Philhealth Facebook page

TACLOBAN CITY  — The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) is eyeing a Php94 billion payment to its members in 2015, up by Php13 billion from what the state firm have paid for health care last year.

In a press briefing here Saturday afternoon, Alexander Padilla, PhilHealth president and chief executive officer, said that expense for healthcare have been consistently growing in the past years.

“We have been paying Php1.6 billion a week in 2014 from less than P500 million a week in 2010,” Padilla told reporters.

Nearly half or Php37 billion of the budget for payment will be sourced out from the 80 percent incremental value of sin taxes.

The increased payment can be attributed to recent expansion of mandatory national health insurance coverage to include poorest families and senior citizens.

On November 2014, President Benigno S. C. Aquino III signed a law mandating an automatic membership of all Filipinos 60 years and older. For this year, Padilla said that about three million elderly will be listed as beneficiaries of lifetime coverage.

PhilHealth is also stepping up the implementation of points of service program where non-enrolled poor families can sign up for health insurance even during hospital confinement.

As of end of last year, 82 million of the 100 million Filipinos are PhilHealth members.

The challenge, according to Padilla, is the coverage of informal sector, indigenous people, and overseas Filipino workers not registered with the government.