Lots of people are just headline readers. It's really best to hear both sides and understand what was the thought process leading to this scenario. Please feel free to correct if my understanding is wrong.
1.) Leftover budget from 2024 can be used in 2025. Philhealth was able to acquire budget good for 2 years and was able to utilize only around 63%. There is still around 150B Php left. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/930094/doh-philhealth-still-has-p150b-even-with-no-subsidy-in-2025/story
They say that the lack of government subsidy only means no additional funds allocated, but there is an assumption that Philhealth still has a budget.
For me, I think this is fine and a matter of fund utilization. If the main proponents for additional subsidy claims that it is still underfunded, then they can argue if they have better projections.
I support Universal Health Care even though I know the middle class (salaried workers) mostly finance it. I'm sure anyone is willing to pay more as long as they see the value of where their taxes go. I also agree that gov't should look into the incentivization aspect of such policies. There should be countermeasures in order for these not to be abused.
One of the real problems in our society is that the majority is not picking the right candidates for certain roles. Congress and Senate should have politicians who are great and give focus in creating better laws. Unfortunately, I would wonder how many % really understand their role. They only think of politics as a platform but they don't abide to having systematic fixes. Always band aid solutions and always biased towards their favor.
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.