PhilHealth eyes new health package to cover more tests, meds

THE PHILIPPINE Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) is coming up with a new package that will cover maintenance medicines, more medical exams and laboratories of its members starting early next year.

Dubbed the preventive health package, it will initially benefit 15 million poor Filipino households enrolled in the state health insurance firm at P1,000 per family every year, PhilHealth president Alex Padilla told a press briefing in Pasig City recently.

“We are still perfecting the package, which would of course be covering more laboratories and examinations and even medicines and daily maintenance drugs,” Padilla told reporters.

“We will start at a small amount of about P1,000 per family per year but of course, this will increase as we go along,” he added.

Padilla said PhilHealth was looking at launching the new benefit package in March or June next year, prioritizing indigent families listed in the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction.

But it will later be expanded to cover other sectors enrolled in Philhealth, he added.

As of June 30 this year, PhilHealth has 38.5 million members, accounting for 88-percent coverage nationwide. Of the total, 40 percent belong to the poor sector, which has a total of 45 million beneficiaries.

If the launching of the new benefit package will push through early next year, it would complement the Department of Health’s (DOH) Diabetes and Hypertension Club, which will provide free maintenance medications to patients with such conditions every month.

Last week, the DOH announced that patients with diabetes and hypertension who are enrolled in the club can avail of free medicines starting January.