CONVENIENCE Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa describes the scrapping of the purchase slip booklet requirement as a “gift of convenience” for senior citizens.
MANILA, Philippines — Senior citizens will no longer need to present their purchase slip booklets to avail themselves of the discount on medicines, according to the newest directive from the Department of Health (DOH).
Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa on Monday signed DOH Administrative Order (AO) No. 2024-0017, which removes the requirement for seniors to present the purchase booklet to drugstores in order to get a 20-percent discount.
“I am also a senior citizen. I know it is hard to always bring a purchase booklet with you. Seniors need the discount on their medicines, and we must make it easy for them to get that,” Herbosa pointed out.
“On behalf of President Marcos Jr., we at the DOH give this gift of convenience and more affordable medicines to all of our senior citizens,” he added.
READ: Reminder to seniors: Discounts total 32%
The decision of the DOH to revise its rules was to make it consistent with Republic Act No. 9994, or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, which does not require seniors to present a purchase booklet to be entitled to the 20-percent discount on medicines on top of the exemption from the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) on these products.
The law requires seniors to present to drugstores and pharmacies only an identification card issued by their local Office of the Senior Citizen Affairs, a passport, or any other document that establishes that they are at least 60 years old.
Undue burden
While a doctor’s prescription is needed to buy prescription medicines, the Food and Drug Administration noted that this is not required when buying over-the-counter drugs, including vitamins and food supplements.
“The department recognizes that requiring senior citizens to present purchase booklets during every transaction to avail [themselves of] the 20 percent discount in the purchase of medicines results in undue burden and difficulties,” Herbosa said in AO 2024-0017.
The revised policy will benefit more than 9.2 million Filipino senior citizens in the country, based on the latest 2020 census by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
The newest AO revises certain sections of DOH AOs No. 2010-0032 and 2012-0007.
Based on the previous AOs, the purchase slip booklets are used to record the medicines, their quantity, and when and where they were bought by the seniors to help the drugstores monitor the last purchase made for a certain medicine.
The purchase slip booklets were also used by pharmacists of drugstores to indicate the quantity of the unfilled balance of prescription drugs, including maintenance medicines, that needed to be bought in the future by senior citizens.
No policy on PWDs yet
Under the previous AOs, pharmacies cannot dispense more than a month’s supply of prescription medicines to senior citizens to ensure the safety and potency of the drugs purchased.
Absent the purchase slip booklets, based on the new policy, the pharmacist will now indicate the quantity partially filled and the unfilled balance on the prescription.
“The senior citizen shall retain the partially filled prescription and present the same later to complete the prescribed quantity,” AO 2024-0017 states.
Asked if the policy of removing the requirement for purchase booklets would also apply to persons with disabilities (PWDs)—who are also afforded the same 20-percent discount and VAT exemption when purchasing medicines—Herbosa deferred to the National Council on Disability Affairs, an attached agency of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
The National Commission of Senior Citizens, whose mandate is to ensure the effective implementation of various programs and services for seniors, is under the Office of the President.
Ensuring compliance
In January 2024, ACT-CIS Rep. Erwin Tulfo proposed to have the senior citizen’s purchase booklet requirement when claiming discounts in establishments removed, a proposal similar to that made earlier by Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo.
A position paper by the DSWD Program Management Bureau (PMB) said the booklets were inconvenient, as some senior citizens forget to bring them when making purchases.
The PMB proposed that the booklets be replaced by online records instead for the sake of convenience.
However, the Drugstores Association of the Philippines (DAP) argued that the booklet was still useful and necessary to ensure compliance with prescribed medications and prevent abuses.
According to DAP president Vicente Briones during the House committee on ways and means hearing in February, the booklet also acted as the DAP’s “basis of control if seniors need to return to their doctors,” as without it, “the senior would continue to buy the medicine even if he or she does not need it.” —with a report from Inquirer Research