Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Teodoro Herbosa on Saturday said the “broken” system of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) needs to be fixed.
In a meeting with officials with St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City as he kicked off this year’s hospital rounds for the holiday season, Herbosa quoted by ABS-CBN News, said: “As chair of the Philhealth board, we’re really trying to fix this problem. The system is broken.”
The DOH chief slammed Philhealth for not using its funds to settle its arrears with St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City.
He also cited a supposed online petition that he asked the hospital’s doctors not to support.
“The petition wants me to give the money back to PhilHealth. Teka muna. Eh ‘di ba ang ginagawa ng Philhealth hindi naman binabayad sa utang sa inyo, nilalagay nila sa bangko. Tama ba yun? ‘Di ba mali yun? Zinero nila, eh ang dami nang pera niyo sa bangko eh. Bayaran niyo muna utang niyo sa St. Luke’s,” he said.
“P800 million na utang sa inyo? That’s a lot of money. That’s almost a billion pesos and you’re the private sector you don’t get subsidy unlike our government hospitals [they] get a subsidy,” the DOH chief added.
Herbosa emphasized that Philhealth’s system needs fixing and that the state health insurer’s funds should be utilized properly as it “belongs to the Filipino people.”
