{"id":265056,"date":"2020-08-12T08:24:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T12:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=265056"},"modified":"2020-08-12T08:24:15","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T12:24:15","slug":"house-leader-wants-plunder-raps-vs-philhealth-mafia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/08\/12\/house-leader-wants-plunder-raps-vs-philhealth-mafia\/","title":{"rendered":"House leader wants plunder raps vs. PhilHealth ‘mafia’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
During a joint House hearing on the alleged graft and corrupt practices in PhilHealth, Defensor questioned the sharp rise in the number of claims for various health cases with the state insurer over the years. (File photo: Michael Tan Defensor\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 House Committee on Public Accounts chairman Michael Defensor on Wednesday recommended the filing of plunder charges against all officials of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) involved in the so-called \u201cmafia\u201d that runs various fraudulent schemes.<\/p>\n

During a joint House hearing on the alleged graft and corrupt practices in PhilHealth, Defensor questioned the sharp rise in the number of claims for various health cases with the state insurer over the years.<\/p>\n

Defensor pointed out that this could be one of the schemes of the mafia in the agency, particularly noting faster transactions in private hospitals compared to government hospitals.<\/p>\n

“We know on the regional level,\u00a0meron kayong tinatawag na<\/em>\u00a0Benefits Claim Committee.\u00a0At dahil may<\/em>\u00a0case rate setup,\u00a0ibibigay na lang ‘yun sa<\/em>\u00a0Finance (you have a so-called Benefits Claim Committee. And through a case rate setup, this could just be submitted to the Finance [Committee],” he said\u00a0“Pagdating sa<\/em>\u00a0Finance,\u00a0walang tanong-tanong dahil<\/em>\u00a0submitted\u00a0ng<\/em>\u00a0region,\u00a0babayaran agad. At pagdating diyan, lalabas na ang pondo sa mga ospital<\/em>\u00a0(When it reaches the Finance, no questions asked because it was submitted by the region and it will immediately be paid for. Afterwards, the funds will be released to the hospitals).\u201d<\/p>\n

Defensor said these activities are tantamount to plunder as he proposed that charges be filed against the PhilHealth officials involved.<\/p>\n

“I submit to the members of this committee, this in fact is plunder. ‘Yung bilyon-bilyong nawala ay<\/em>\u00a0plunder (The billions of pesos lost constitutes plunder),” he said.<\/p>\n

Defensor recommended to also file charges against officials at the regional level\u00a0\u201cdahil lalabas diyan sinong ospital ang nakinabang, sinong kakutsaba<\/em>\u00a0(because the hospitals that benefited from this scheme would be revealed).\u201d<\/p>\n

“Dahil malinaw naman ang<\/em>\u00a0records\u00a0ng<\/em>\u00a0COA (Commission on Audit)\u00a0at madali itong imbestigahan<\/em>\u00a0(The COA records are clear and it will be easier to investigate this),” he added.<\/p>\n

On Friday, President Rodrigo Duterte directed the Department of Justice to create a task force to probe the supposed widespread corruption within PhilHealth.<\/p>\n

The President’s order came after resigned PhilHealth anti-fraud officer Thorsson Montes Keith claimed that some PHP15 billion of the agency\u2019s funds had been pocketed by some corrupt officials.<\/p>\n

Keith also claimed that all members of the state firm\u2019s executive committee composed the \u201cmafia\u201d, which had been allegedly siphoning funds from PhilHealth in the past years through fraudulent transactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 House Committee on Public Accounts chairman Michael Defensor on Wednesday recommended the filing of plunder charges against all officials …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":250034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-filane-mikee-cervantes","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265059,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265056\/revisions\/265059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}