Lawmakers who approved next year’s P113-billion allocation for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) expect improved benefits coverage and enhanced zero billing for patients.
‘First, we expect wider PhilHealth coverage and higher benefits package; second is the lowering of premiums for direct contributors and third, we expect them to fully pay their financial obligations to hospitals,’ Rep. Mikaela Angela Suansing told a news briefing yesterday.
‘These are the three conditions that we wanted PhilHealth to meet. And one of the manifestations that I gave is that we even gave PhilHealth a deadline to give us a detailed analysis of how they can actually improve the benefits package,’ she said.
Rep. Rodolfo Ordanes of Senior Citizens party-list also said that the Departments of Finance and Budget and Management should ‘closely monitor’ how PhilHealth spends its funds.
‘These conditions are necessary to make sure that the problems that led to the subsidy not being spent before do not happen again,’ he said.
SC urged: Rule on unprogrammed funds
Meanwhile, Bayan Muna has urged the Supreme Court (SC) to rule once and for all on the constitutionality of the practice of inserting unprogrammed appropriations in the national budget and the transfer of excess funds of PhilHealth and other government-owned and controlled corporations to the national treasury.
Bayan Muna chairman Neri Colmenares and former representatives Carlos Zarate and Ferdinand Gaite urged the SC to resolve the consolidated petitions assailing the legality of the diversion of P89.9 billion in PhilHealth funds to unprogrammed appropriations also dubbed as the ‘congressional pork barrel’ in the 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
The group said that while President Marcos has recently ordered the return of the P60 billion diverted funds to PhilHealth, this does not render moot the issues on the legality of the fund transfer and the insertion of unprogrammed appropriations in the GAA.
The group noted that House Bill No. 4850 or the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) for 2026 again includes unprogrammed appropriations amounting to P249.9 billion out of the P6.793 trillion proposed national budget.
Aside from the legality of insertion of unprogrammed appropriations, another issue that Bayan Muna wanted the SC to ‘resolve with finality’ is the constitutionality of the presidential certification of urgency with respect to passage of the national budget bill.