PhilHealth assures ample funds for Covid-19 patients

Morales, however, admitted that PhilHealth is facing a shortfall in the insurance collection from its members. (File Photo: Philippine Health Insurance Corporation/Facebook)

MANILA –The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) on Thursday assured it has enough funds to cover the health packages of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) patients.

During a virtual meeting of the House of Representatives’ Defeat COVID-19 Committee, PhilHealth president and chief executive officer Ricardo Morales said the state-owned firm has PHP30 billion prepositioned to accredited hospitals to help them respond to the Covid-19 outbreak in the country.

Morales, however, admitted that PhilHealth is facing a shortfall in the insurance collection from its members.

“We anticipated this because everybody is cash-strapped. But before things get very critical, we can get over this and start to recover,” Morales said.

“But before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were already projecting a net loss because we were not given the funding which we asked to support the funding of the UHC [Universal Health Care]. However for the Covid pandemic, we are confident that we can support this requirement,” he added.

Morales said the total assets of the insurance firm stand at PHP221 billion.

“Our current assets are about PHP70 billion, that’s easily converted into cash. On top of that, we have investments and securities that can also be converted to cash of about PHP124 billion,” he said.

The insurance firm started limiting the cost of Covid-19 treatment on Wednesday with the new case rate package covering four categories: PHP43,997 for mild pneumonia, PHP143,267 for moderate pneumonia, PHP333,519 for severe pneumonia, PHP786,384 for critical pneumonia.

Prior to the new package, the PhilHealth has assured the public that it will “shoulder the full cost of treatment of Covid-19 cases until April 14, 2020.”

In its Advisory No. 2020-022 addressed to all accredited hospitals and health facilities in the country, PhilHealth clarified that “after the (said) date, we shall continue to provide financial coverage to CoViD cases thru a recomputed case rate.”, citing that “the reason for this accommodation window is due to the novelty and the wide range of severity of the disease in the country for which no existing case rate or package based on accepted protocols has yet been established.”