Health Secretary Enrique Ona
MANILA, Philippines—It’s “enough” but we want more.
Health Secretary Enrique Ona said on Wednesday that while the “sin tax” bill version of Sen. Franklin Drilon met the minimum revenue target of government, the Department of Health would like the Senate to pass a bill that would raise P60 billion in “sin” taxes.
Ona said the Drilon version, expected to raise P40 billion in revenues, met the “floor” estimate that government experts said would be enough to reduce the number of smokers in the country while providing funds for the healthcare coverage of 5.6 million more “very poor” Filipino families.
“That’s the lowest. That’s our floor (estimate) but we’d like it to be around P60 billion,” Ona said in a press conference.
“Now, why do we say that? It is because we have computed the cost for the government to sustain universal health care,” he added.
Ona explained that the government was already footing the bill for the health care coverage of 5.2 million “very poor” families.
“But we still have many poor families and we want 5.6 million more families who are really poor to be included in the program. That’s another P12 billion,” Ona said.
Ona said that the sin tax bill would be important in making sure that future administrations would no longer have to seek funding from Congress every year for the health care coverage of the “poorest of our people.”
“We have to to fight for that every year so it’s not automatic. I can probably sure it will be automatic during the Aquino administration but what happens after?” he said.
“It has to be emphasized that the one single law that will become so important for the health of the people is really the passage of the sin tax,” he added.
Ona pointed out that the bill’s passage would lead to an increase in cigarette prices to discourage the youth from taking up the smoking habit.
“It is very important for us that cigarette prices should go up so that they would be beyond the reach of our youth,” he said.