{"id":65430,"date":"2015-11-23T06:13:52","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T12:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=65430"},"modified":"2015-11-23T21:51:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T03:51:10","slug":"pcso-chief-seeks-probe-over-special-treatment-ghost-beneficiaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/11\/23\/pcso-chief-seeks-probe-over-special-treatment-ghost-beneficiaries\/","title":{"rendered":"PCSO chief seeks probe over \u2018special treatment,\u2019 \u2018ghost beneficiaries\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_65431\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-65431\" style=\"width: 807px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/249069_628573927170027_213095367_n.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65431\" src=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/249069_628573927170027_213095367_n.png\" alt=\"PCSO chair Ayong Maliksi (Facebook photo)\" width=\"807\" height=\"571\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/249069_628573927170027_213095367_n.png 807w, https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/249069_628573927170027_213095367_n-300x212.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 807px) 100vw, 807px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-65431\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PCSO chair Ayong Maliksi (Facebook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>MANILA \u2013 With reports over unqualified patients and ghost beneficiaries receiving benefits, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Chair Ayong Maliksi wanted a review of the agency\u2019s individual medical assistance program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile others line up from dawn to seek assistance and only receive a fraction of what they need, some patients supposedly close to some officials of the agency have had all their medical bills covered while confined in expensive hospital suites,\u201d Maliksi said in an Inquirer.net report.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGuarantee letters are provided to these patients three to four times a month without the patient or his or her relatives being interviewed by a social worker as required,\u201d he added, mentioning that these letters were \u2018received and released on the same day\u2019 and were processed by the favored patients\u2019 drivers or personal assistants.<\/p>\n<p>The PCSO chair \u00a0disclosed reports that \u2018those who have connections receive up to more than P1 million in financial help from the PCSO,\u2019 even only <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/10\/pcso-approves-funding-for-63-hospitals\/\" target=\"_blank\">at least 10 percent of patients\u2019 hospital expenses were covered by the program<\/a><\/strong>. He noted that he already knew who these patients were \u2013 and they all resided in exclusive subdivisions.<\/p>\n<p>Maliksi also received word about \u2018ghost beneficiaries of medical assistance, which is harder to establish because of the bulk of the transactions.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>While unqualified patients and ghost beneficiaries easily received thousands of pesos in medical assistance, regular patients waited in long queues as they had their documents processed for them to avail the PCSO\u2019s benefits.<\/p>\n<p>The PCSO chief then vowed to launch an investigation over the irregularities in the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MANILA \u2013 With reports over unqualified patients and ghost beneficiaries receiving benefits, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Chair Ayong Maliksi &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":65431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-65430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-rewrite","mauthors-cyra-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65430","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=65430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}