PhilHealth to cover street children, PWDs, indigenous people – DOH

PhilHealth. Photo courtesy of doh.gov.ph

MANILA — Street children, persons with disabilities (PWDs), and even surrenderers and indigenous peoples (IPs) will be covered by PhilHealth (Philippine Health Insurance Corp.), according to the Department of Health (DOH).

DOH Secretary Enrique T. Ona said there are still many poor Filipinos who are not yet covered by PhilHealth and there is a need to conduct a re-validation or revision of data starting from the last quarter of this year in order to cover the remaining poor Filipinos.

“By 2015, we will even be expanding the PhilHealth coverage. There are many of our poor Filipinos who are not yet covered by PhilHealth, for example, the disabled, our street children, surrenderers, and even indigenous peoples,” Dr. Ona added.

The beneficiaries are identified through the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DWSD) National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), the mechanism to identify the poorest families in the country.

Secretary Ona noted that 14.72 million families, which translate into almost 50 million individuals belonging to the poorest of the poor and the not-so-poor, are now being covered by PhilHealth.

This means that they are benefitting from the “No-Balance Billing” policy in government hospitals.

At present, 82 percent of the population have been covered by PhilHealth.