New PhilHealth chief ordered to shuffle regional VPs

Dante Gierran

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte directed Dante Gierran, the new president of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), to clean up the graft-ridden health insurer and send its corrupt officials to jail.

“I pity the country. My heart bleeds for my country. The unabated corruption, with no end in sight and another election coming up, and you see the same old faces there. So the same old system with their men in place,” Mr. Duterte told Gierran in a televised speech on Monday night after he appointed the retired director of the National Bureau of Investigation as PhilHealth chief.

Duterte ordered Gierran to remove all regional vice presidents “whether performing at par or in parity with the other good ones” over the next “two or three days.”

“You know, if they are there for so long a time, the element of familiarity always enters the picture. That’s the difficulty there. If they have been there long enough, remove them. Those who don’t want to be removed, report to me,” the President said.

According to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque the President’s order was to reshuffle, not sack the regional vice presidents.

“I think this should be done regularly, because they shouldn’t be staying long in the regional offices. They tend to have their own ‘kingdom.’ So it’s just a reshuffle,” Roque said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

Gordon recommendation

It was unclear whether the President’s directive was related to Sen. Richard Gordon’s recommendation last week to file criminal charges against the “Mindanao Group” of regional vice presidents who have been holding their positions for over 20 years and had allegedly pocketed 20 percent in kickbacks from multibillion-peso rackets.

The President told Gierran that the next two years would be devoted to cleansing PhilHealth and fighting corrupt officials.

“So you must send these guys to prison, because that’s really a problem,” he said.

Gierran, 65, replaces Ricardo Morales, a retired Army general, who was told by the President last week to step down for health reasons.

Gierran headed the NBI’s regional office in Davao before serving four years as NBI chief until his retirement last February.

Roque said Gierran had fulfilled the law’s requirement that the PhilHealth president must have seven years of management experience.

The law requires that the PhilHealth board recommends as president someone who also has experience in public health, finance and health economics or a combination of these fields of expertise.

‘White-collar crimes’

Roque said Gierran’s background in criminal investigation would be very useful in his new post.

“Because the crimes in PhilHealth are white-collar crimes, he (PhilHealth president) should be someone who understands financial reports, financial records, and balance statements. I think Gierran is the best choice because he is a CPA [certified public accountant] and a lawyer who has experience in criminal investigation,” Roque said.

Gierran belongs to the same fraternity as the President — Lex Talionis Fraternitas at San Beda College of Law.

In 2016, confessed Davao Death Squad member Edgar Matobato linked Gierran to the 2007 killing of a man who was allegedly fed to crocodiles. Gierran denied the allegations.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III also said Gierran was “a very good choice.”

“Aside from a clean record, he has investigative skills that can crack the whip in ferreting out anomalies in the agency,” Sotto said in a Viber message.

Kiko’s ‘serious misgivings’

Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan said he had “serious misgivings” about Gierran’s lack of qualifications to manage the government agency responsible for providing medical insurance coverage to all Filipinos.

He told the Inquirer that the country needed “a more holistic rather than a simplistic law enforcement approach to the cancer confronting PhilHealth in particular and the COVID-19 health crisis in general.”

“His predecessor, too, had no public health experience and that ended terribly for PhilHealth. For the sake of PhilHealth, my serious misgivings notwithstanding, I hope he succeeds where others have failed,” he said.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto suggested that Gierran recruit officials from the Philippine General Hospital to be part of a “multidisciplinary team, without a single OJT (on-the-job trainee).”

“This is so because this management change is akin to switching surgeons in the middle of an operation,” Recto said.

Sen. Sonny Angara said the new PhilHealth chief should make use of new technology to eradicate fraud and replace the flawed information system of the state-run health insurer.

“He must shepherd PhilHealth into the 21st century using tools like information technology, blockchain and the like. He must also update the system of case rates, which has given rise to systemic corruption at the expense, tragically, of the people who need it the most,” Angara said.

‘Like a snake pit’

Gierran told CNN Philippines in an interview on Tuesday that he planned to “revamp” the agency “two to three days from today.”

He also said he would immediately look into alleged irregularities in the disbursement of PhilHealth funds supposedly for members’ medical benefits related to COVID-19.

The planned revamp would require him to put up “my own management committee,” he said.

“I was told PhilHealth is like a snake pit. I have to be careful and one way to (do that) is choose the right people to be with me,” Gierran said.

He said he would “give the benefit of the doubt to the people of PhilHealth,” believing that there were “a lot of good people” who would support a “good cause.”

In a separate interview with ABS-CBN News Channel, he said that although he was “scared” of the job given by the President, he expressed determination to perform it.

“I’m scared because No. 1, I do not know the operation of PhilHealth … I don’t have experience [in] public health. What I have knowledge of is financial management—being a certified public accountant—and law, insurance and of course my knowledge about investigation,” Gierran said.

He said his job was “to restore the confidence, trust of the people” and appealed to be given “a chance to lead.”

“Don’t judge me. After all, if I can’t do my job, I’ll tell my principal that I can’t do my job,” Gierran added.

—With reports from Marlon Ramos, Cathy Cañares Yamsuan and Jovic Yee