Sen. JV Ejercito —Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. JV Ejercito appealed to the country’s economic managers as well as the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) to prioritize bids to lower premium contribution rates and finish its obligation to all members prior to considering the return of the excess P90 billion government health subsidy to the national treasury.
The senator made the call in a press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s also in the law—if there is an excess fund, let’s first lower the premium rates and increase the benefit packages,“ said Ejercito.
READ: PhilHealth members’ contribution hikes to 5% this 2024
According to the senator, there is no clear policy to date which guidelines are being followed by PhilHealth in terms of declaring excess funds.
“Well, that’s probably something that should be debated on. What are excess funds? What are reserved funds? But for me, we can also say that it can be considered an excess fund after all the obligations have been met,” said Ejercito.
Projects that need to be funded
While he made such a call, the senator said he understands where the country’s economic managers are coming from, considering that there are a lot of programs and a lot of projects that need to be funded.
“You can’t blame the economic managers either because there are a lot of programs and a lot of projects that need to be funded. Those that stimulate economic growth, the government is also looking for revenues and funds to fund their programs, so you can’t blame them either,” he emphasized.
Earlier, PhilHealth President Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. said they would already recommend to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the reduction of PhilHealth premium contribution rates.
At the Senate committee on health’s Tuesday hearing, Ledesma said they would raise their recommendation as soon as possible.
“Especially after this very nice hearing that just happened. We will do it immediately as early as this afternoon. I will convene our team and we will recommend for a reduction in the premium contribution rates to President Marcos, immediately,” said Ledesma after he was asked by Sen. Bong Go whether or not PhilHealth would recommend the said reduction.