By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Government officials on Thursday scrambled to deny reports that the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (
Philhealth) was on the brink of bankruptcy, and assured its 79 million members that it was financially stable.
Contrary to the reports, Philhealth’s net income even doubled from P5 billion in 2001 to P10 billion in 2008, and has a reserve fund of P63 billion, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya said.
“
Philhealth is far from bankruptcy,’’ he told reporters in a Malacañang briefing.
Melinda Mercado, Philhealth SVP for operations, agreed with Andaya. “We’re able to pay premium. It’s strong and stable, don’t worry,’’ she said in the joint briefing with Andaya.
Nerissa Santiago, Philhealth VP for actuary, told a Senate hearing Wednesday that the national government owed the government corporation some P19.2 billion in unpaid contributions to members.
Sen. Loren Legarda, chair of the health committee that heard a bill providing insurance for Filipinos, wondered how the government racked up such debt
to cause Philhealth’s bankruptcy.
Andaya clarified that per Philhealth’s computation, the DBM owed P9 billion to the corporation. But per DBM’s computation, it owed the corporation a smaller amount.
“And this is now the subject of talks,’’ he said of the figure. “They have their own computation, we have our own computation.’’
According to Mercado, the DBM remitted some P388 million in 2006, and P85 million in 2007, and some P610 million has been appropriated from the 2009 national budget for release to Philhealth.
“Those are projections or assumptions, assuming there’s no effort to increase collections,†she said of the reported P19.2 billion arrears by the national government to Philhealth.
The national government pays a counterpart premium to Philhealth for government employees.
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Topic: PhilHealth will go bankrupt? (Read 1837 times)