PhilHealth to follow SC order but insists execs’ benefits are above-board

FILE PHOTO: Philippine Health Insurance Corp. INQUIRER FILES

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) has promised to abide by whatever order the Supreme Court (SC) releases, even as the agency maintained that benefits given to officials in 2014 that were labeled illegal and irregular are above-board.

PhilHealth Executive Vice President Eli Dino Santos in a statement on Thursday, assured the public that PhilHealth has complied with the Commission on Audit (COA) decision to disallow P83.06 million in educational assistance and birthday gift benefits given to the state-insurer’s officials and employees in 2014.

The disallowance from COA was the subject of a 21-page decision from SC dated September 27, dismissing PhilHealth’s petition challenging the COA ruling issued in 2018.

“We wish to inform the public that PhilHealth immediately discontinued the subject allowances after receipt of the Notice of Disallowance from COA.  The subsequent salary benefits given to our employees have since been aligned with those under the Salary Standardization Law IV, and now with the Compensation and Position Classification System issued by the Governance Commission for Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG),” Santos said.

“We maintain, however, that those allowances were given in good faith, above board, not extravagant, and most of all, well deserved by the hardworking officers and employees of the state insurer,” he added.

READ: SC: P83-M PhilHealth execs’ benefits ‘illegal, irregular’ 

The PhilHealth official also revealed that they filed a motion for reconsideration regarding the said case last December 20.

“Meantime, we will be waiting for the decision of the Supreme Court on our Motion for Reconsideration filed last December 20, 2022.  PhilHealth will fully comply with the directive of the Court once issued with finality,” Santos said.

“We assure the public that PhilHealth is prudent in administering its funds, and ensure that meeting our financial obligations, especially in the payment of benefit claims, is always our top priority,” he explained.

This is not the first time PhilHealth has been embroiled in a corruption allegation.  In 2020, after the pandemic affected the country, there were questions as to why payments for COVID-19 care packages were made to unauthorized healthcare facilities.

Former senator Panfilo Lacson said there were issues with the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM) as payments made by PhilHealth included non-fortuitous cases like pregnancies and kidney ailments when these should have been allocated to COVID-19 patients.

READ: PhilHealth questioned: Why are dialysis, lying-in centers included in IRM for COVID-19? 

Last July 2020, anti-fraud officer Thorrsson Montes Keith resigned from PhilHealth, claiming that corruption is rampant within the state insurer, as a supposed mafia has already pocketed more than P15 billion of funds.

It was also revealed that some of PhilHealth’s procurements were overpriced — including an Adobe master collection software priced P21 million — 12,400 times higher than normal rates.

READ: Source says deep corruption in PhilHealth forced 3 fed-up execs to quit 

In 2019, the Philippine Daily Inquirer also ran a series of investigative reports showing a scheme where it is made to appear that already dead patients are still receiving dialysis and claims from PhilHealth.

READ: PhilHealth pays for ghost kidney treatments 

JPV/abc