MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered the Department of Health (DOH) to ensure that services provided by the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) would remain unhampered despite not receiving any government subsidy for this fiscal year.
Marcos gave the directive during his meeting with Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa and other select Cabinet officials in Malacañang on Tuesday.
“Make sure that services of PhilHealth remain unhampered … it (zero budget) should not affect the delivery of healthcare services,” he was quoted as saying.
To recall, the chief executive backed the decision of Congress to not give the health state insurer even a centavo of government subsidy, insisting that “they have sufficient funds to carry on.”
Marcos also pointed out that the money for the government subsidy was only lying idle in the bank under PhilHealth’s account and not being utilized – a big waste since the government could have used the funds for its other programs.
Despite this, both the President and the DOH have assured the public that PhilHealth would remain stable and that the government would exhaust all efforts for Filipinos to receive maximum benefits from the insurer.
Meanwhile, Marcos reminded Herbosa to realign DOH’s focus from cure to prevention, stressing that “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound in cure” and that the agency should ramp up efforts to provide ample and quality health and medical care to citizens.
This, as he reiterated his administration’s commitment to prioritizing social services in the 2025 national budget, focusing on key sectors such as education, health, economic services, infrastructure and agriculture.
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