“Philhealth is financially healthy”
“Philhealth is financially healthy” This seems to be the assurance that government wants to give as news broke out recently that the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) was on the brink of bankruptcy.
In a Malacañang briefing, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya told reporters that “Philhealth is far from bankruptcy.” He even said that contrary to the reports, Philhealth was able to double its net income from P5 billion in 2001 to P10 billion in 2008, and it has a reserve fund of P63 billion.
He issued assurance to the agency’s 79 million members that it was financially stable. This was seconded by Philhealth SVP for operations Melinda Mercado who said, “We’re able to pay premium. It’s strong and stable, don’t worry.”
The bankruptcy news broke out after Philhealth VP for actuary, Nerissa Santiago, said in a Senate hearing on Wednesday that the national government owed Philhealth some P19.2 billion in unpaid contribution to members.
The national government pays a counterpart premium to Philhealth for government employees.
Sen. Loren Legarda, chair of the health committee that heard a bill providing insurance for Filipinos, was wondering how the government racked up such debt to cause Philhealth’s bankruptcy.
To clarify, Andaya said that as per Philhealth’s computation, the DBM owed P9 billion to the corporation, but as per DBM’s corporation, it owed a smaller amount. “And this is now the subject of talks. They have their own computation, we have our own computation,” he added.
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.
August 21, 2009
Tags: bankruptcy, finance, financialy stable, Government, liquidity, money, Philhealth, Philippines Posted in: Announcement, Government, Philippine business news, Philippines, finance, money
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