Medical societies demand return of PhilHealth funds

DIFFERENT medical organizations and societies yesterday called on President Marcos Jr. to order the return of the almost P90 billion funds of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) from the national treasury after its questioned transfer earlier in the year.

In a statement, some 35 medical societies, led by the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) and the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP), said using PhilHealth funds for other purposes is against the Universal Healthcare Law (UHC) or Republic Act 11223.

“According to the primary principle behind social health insurance, once the subsidy from the government is given to PhilHealth, those funds belong to the pool of contributions that should be used for the benefit of the people. Using the subsidy for other purposes is tantamount to taking away funds meant for their healthcare,” said the medical organizations.

“We are calling on President Marcos to immediately issue a directive to return the entirety of PhilHealth’s P89.9 billion unused funds to PhilHealth,” they said.

“The transfer of unused PhilHealth funds goes against Section 11 of the Universal Healthcare Law… this is tantamount to taking away people’s money that are intended for their healthcare,” they added.

RA 11223 states that “no portion of the reserve fund or income thereof shall accrue to the general fund of the national government or to any of its agencies or instrumentalities.”

Instead of having the funds transferred for other purposes, the groups urged PhilHealth to allocate the unused amount to expand the benefits of Filipinos.

“PhilHealth must decisively and urgently institute measures to assure the immediate enhancement of health benefits,” they said.

The medical societies noted how there is still room to improve PhilHealth benefits due to the huge unmet healthcare needs in the Philippines.

In its Circular No. 003-2024, the Department of Finance (DOF) directed PhilHealth to remit the unused subsidies amounting to almost P90 billion to the national treasury.

According to the Department of Health (DOH), the transferred funds were partly used to finance the unpaid health emergency allowance (HEA) of health workers who served in