It's not a question of whether they can make it without the subsidy, it's more along the lines of giving the idea that funds are going to be enough to cover the liabilities. PhilHealth already has backlogs from paying private hospitals yet boast about having enough funds to cover it in reserve. It also recently increased the member contributions yearly while increasing their point of care entries for new members that may or may not be able to pay.
I pay for my Philhealth because it's automatically deducted from my salary but I'm not looking forward to using it because I don't want to get sick. Meanwhile, for people that aren't able to work for their shares get to use the benefits, fine, for humanitarian reasons and whatever, just hope they don't spin a narrative to increase the contributions again because they advertised more benefits while the same working class foots the bill.
Great points there. On one side, gov't says there is surplus, but on the ground there is still a delay in payments. It would be interesting to understand what is the source of these delays. Seems to me it's a Philhealth issue more than just a funding issue (from National budget). So if we give gov't subsidy, what is the guarantee that such budget will be utililized properly?
Maybe the missing piece here is on how GOCC performance like Philhealth is being measured? Of course, the measure should not be profit-driven but more on efficiency.
a.) How much budget has been utilized? Over/Under?
b.) Efficiency rating of Philhealth payments - is this comparable to HMOs as well, I've heard those are late too?
c.) Sustainability - how many years can Philhealth reserve funds cover? I believe there are typical measures already within the insurance/actuarial industry.
etc...
Based on the above, if these questions can be answered, then we can proceed to the question whether or not Philhealth deserves gov't subsidy.