MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed confidence that new Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dante Gierran can weed out deep-rooted corruption within the state insurer, Malacañang said on Tuesday.
“Naisip po ng Presidente ang pinakamagaling na italaga diyan, number one, ‘yung mayroong kakayahang mag-conduct ng mga imbestigasyon at ito nga po si Director Gierran (The President thinks the best choice to conduct investigation there is Director Gierran),” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a virtual press briefing.
In a public address delivered on Monday night, Duterte announced his decision to appoint Gierran as the new head of PhilHealth, which is subject to ongoing investigations due to supposed massive corruption.
Gierran replaced Ricardo Morales who resigned from his post last week due to health reasons and amid investigations on alleged irregularities committed by erring PhilHealth personnel.
Gierran, a lawyer and a certified public accountant, was appointed as National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director in 2016.
During his stint at the NBI, he was ordered to implement a major revamp and send corrupt individuals to jail.
Some have questioned Gierran’s appointment, citing a provision of Republic Act (RA) 11223 or the Universal Health Care Law.
Under Section 14 or RA 11223, PhilHealth must be led by a Filipino citizen with “at least seven years of experience in the field of public health, management, finance, and health economics or a combination of any of these expertise.”
Roque, however, defended Duterte’s decision to tap Gierran as new PhilHealth chief.
“Director Gierran already has seven years (of) management experience. Hindi naman po kinakailangan na health economics experience (He does not need to have experience in health economics),” he said.
On August 25, Duterte vowed to use his last two years in office to run after corrupt PhilHealth officials and employees.
In his remarks on Monday, the President also ordered Gierran to revamp PhilHealth.
Roque was optimistic that Gierran could help fulfill Duterte’s promise to stop corruption within the embattled state-run insurance firm.
“Wala naman po siyang bahid ng korapsyon (He is corrupt-free). He is a CPA-lawyer and a seasoned investigator, indispensable po para malinis ang PhilHealth (to cleanse PhilHealth),” Roque said, referring to Gierran.
Remain clean as public servant
Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) chairman Dante Jimenez said the appointment of Gierran, former director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), comes at a critical moment when the integrity of the government’s national agencies is being put in question.
”Atty. Gierran, being an accountant himself, remained clean as a public servant, even as he professionalized his men and women while he was NBI director,” Jimenez said.
He said Gierran had been recipient of various awards, including recognition from the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), of which Jimenez is the founding chairman.
”We will need all the muscle to fight these formidable ‘viruses’ in the forms of crime, corruption and illegal drugs, which still persist and continue to victimize our people, especially the poor,” Jimenez said.
The PACC chief said time is of the essence, as the government needs to make the most of the remaining two years of Duterte’s term that will end in 2020.
The government agencies, he added, should now close ranks if the national government aims to win the war against lawlessness and corruption amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“With lesser resources due to this crisis, the fight has become more difficult. We need everyone’s total commitment and cooperation in the ‘whole-of-nation’ approach in fulfilling the Duterte administration’s program of change in the country,” he said.
Judicious use of public funds
Anakalusugan Rep. Michael Defensor urged Gierran to use public funds judiciously amid the irregularities hounding the state insurer.
Defensor, chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, said PhilHealth is set to receive PHP71.4 billion in taxpayer subsidy next year, on top of more than PHP100 billion worth of collections from its members.
“We hope that the new leadership of PhilHealth will use the funds judiciously,” Defensor said. “The subsidy is used mainly to cover non-contributory Filipinos like the poor, those without jobs and senior citizens. That is the mandate of the Universal Health Care Law.”
He called on new PhilHealth chief to scrap the case or package rates and interim reimbursement mechanism, which he described as the “root of all evil and corruption” in the agency.
Structural reforms for PhilHealth
House Ways and Means chairman Joey Sarte Salceda, meanwhile, proposed structural reforms for the PhilHealth to address longstanding issues of corruption and mismanagement in the state health insurance system.
“We have been studying what needs correcting, from a systems perspective. We found that reserve fund management, governance, claims and benefits payments, and collections will have to be reformed significantly,” Salceda said.
Salceda recommended that the reserve fund be accumulated as net earnings, instead of set-aside funds from gross collections, as they are under the current system.
He also recommended that the Bureau of the Treasury manage the reserve fund, since this does not have to be integrated with the insurance operations.
“What we found is that the reserve fund has been shrinking despite PhilHealth being in the green for several years. As a result, investment income, which can increase the people’s health benefits, are also declining,” Salceda added.
Salceda also pointed out that PhilHealth is primarily an insurance and investment operation, and not a health operation.
He said the Finance Secretary should chair the PhilHealth board to help ensure the fiscal sustainability of the insurance system, noting that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the counterpart of PhilHealth in the United States, is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury.
To prevent fraud in claims and benefits, Salceda pushed for the acceleration of the National ID system, as well as the passage of the proposed Electronic Health and Telemedicine Development Act to extend primary care to the remotest regions.
“The immediate rollout of the National Identification System, coupled with a national health database, with a one-patient, one-record system, would make it easier to spot cases of false identity, and fraudulent sickness declarations. Linking this with a national prescription database would also help identify and prevent over prescription,” Salceda said.
As for the current premiums system, Salceda said the scheme is unfair for working minimum-wage families, whom he says “bear the brunt of PhilHealth’s operating costs but do not get commensurate benefits.”
He said a simpler fix would have been to just tie the premium contributions to the personal income tax (PIT), with a PHP100 per month minimum contribution for workers exempt from PIT.
“This would have saved the minimum wage earner at least PHP4,800 a year in premiums, and would also have made the premium structure more attuned to changes in income,” he said. “Our reform will mean that the richer you get, the higher you pay, as is only fair, since you stand the benefit the most, economically, from an economy where healthy citizens live.” (With reports of Filane Mikee Cervantes/PNA)