Marcos justifies zero subsidy for PhilHealth

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday justified the scrapping of the P74-billion subsidy for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), insisting that the agency has "sufficient funds to carry on." In a chance interview with reporters in Malacañang, Marcos noted that the state insurer has P500 billion in reserve funds. "And the cost to provide their services in one year is less than P100 billion. So, their budget actually for expenditure is P260 billion. So, there is still a reserve," he said. "I know people are concerned. Why did we remove it? The reality there is, if you're going to look at it, the Department of Finance withdrew some of the reserves because that hasn't been used for years. In other words, PhilHealth has sufficient budget to do all the things they want to do," he added. The bicameral conference committee has decided to give PhilHealth a "zero budget" for 2025. The president said the money for the government subsidy lies idle in the bank under PhilHealth's account and is not being utilized — a big waste since the government could have used the funds for other programs. Marcos also faulted PhilHealth's "processing capacity," which only creates backlogs in the payouts to beneficiaries. "Because the problem with PhilHealth is not about providing services, it's not about the insurance cover. That's not the problem. It's not about the lack of budget to take care of the people; it's not about not having enough for payments. The problem, if you're going to look at it, because of all the new services of PhilHealth, because of all the new payouts of PhilHealth, the system gets clogged," he explained. "The problem is the processing capacity ... the best way for them is to fully digitalize their process. That's where the effort is so that the processing for the people is continuous. The insurance cover continues; the payment for claims is still there," he said. Marcos also said his office is finding ways to restore the P12 billion lopped off from the proposed budget of the Department of Education (DepEd). "We're working on it to restore it. I do not want to line-item veto anything because that just gets in the way. So, we're still talking about it and trying to find a way," Marcos said. The bicameral conference committee last week trimmed the DepEd budget by P12 billion. Marcos said the cut is "contrary to all our policy direction," which focuses on improving the students' STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) development under the DepEd Computerization Program (DCP). "Because the P10 billion that was cut comes from the computerization item. So, we're working on it to make sure that we will restore it. ... I think we'll still be able to do it, to be able to do something. We're working on it because it's something we really, really need," he stated. "P12 billion is only sufficient to maintain what we're already doing when, in fact, we have to do more. So, there you go; we have to figure that out. I don't want to have that discussion here. We'll have that discussion with the bicam essentially and the leaders of both houses," he said. The president said he will try his best to enact the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) before Christmas. "I will really see to it that we have it finished by then," he said. In a media interview Monday, Education Secretary Sonny Angara said the president had told him to coordinate with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to resolve the budget cut. Sen. Grace Poe on Monday defended the cuts in the proposed P6.3-trillion national budget for 2025, saying they went through an "exhaustive process" and were approved by majority members of Congress. Poe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, said, "Working with finite resources to fund infinite needs is not an easy choice." "But what we have reflects the careful decisions made within the constraints we face," she said. "We reiterate that the education sector remains a priority, as we have increased the budget for students and teachers," she said. Some senators were disappointed about the huge cuts in the allocations for the education and health sectors, but "we fully recognize the President's prerogative over the budget," Poe said. Sen. Imee Marcos appealed to the president, her brother, not to renege on his promised programs for social services during his 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA). She particularly deplored the P50 billion slashed from the 4Ps (Pamilyang Pilipino Pantawid Program), which will affect over 4.4 million poor families. "I appealed to my brother, our dear President Bongbong, that if my voice is weak for being alone [in making this call], I hope you'll listen to the collective appeal of the nation," Marcos said.