Reorganization is a must in order for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. or PhilHealth to pull itself out from the cesspool of alleged corruption that it's currently in, Public Accounts Committee Vice-Chairman and Kabayan party-list Rep. Ron Salo said Thursday, a day after a House of Representatives concluded its investigation on the State-run health insurance firm.
"The allegations of corruption appear to have been consistently committed by PhilHealth executive officials who have permanent positions. Despite the repeated changes in the PhilHealth President and CEO (chief executive officer), these executive officials who ran the daily operations of PhilHealth are retained," noted Salo.
"PhilHealth, thus, needs to be reorganized, and all the executive officials who are alleged to be involved in corruption need to be replaced. We need to entrust our country’s health insurance system to people who are not only competent but trustworthy," he said.
The Public Accounts panel along with the Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability have conducted the past few weeks an exhaustive probe on the alleged shenanigans at PhilHealth, which Public Accounts Chairman and Anakalusugan Party-List Rep. Mike Defensor have likened to plunder.
This supposed "mafia-like" misuse of funds have been to the detriment of contributors, who rely on the insurance firm for relief during their time of medical need.
"Based on the documents submitted, there’s a disconnect between what PhilHealth are reimbursing to the hospitals from what the Department of Health (DoH) considers as the primary cause of mortality among Filipinos," said Salo among his main takeaways from the joint investigation.
"The DoH data show that the No. 1 cause of mortality are diseases related to the heart; and yet, for more than a decade now, the biggest reimbursement annually paid by PhilHealth are pneumonia cases. It appears that there has been an annual pneumonia pandemic without the knowledge of, or any action being taken by, the DoH. And Philhealth seems to be not bothered by such data despite annually paying staggering amounts for this illness," Salo said.
According to the Kabayan solon, accurate data should be the cornerstone for the adoption and implementation of appropriate policies both within the DoH and the PhilHealth.
"However, with all the accusations of fraud within PhilHealth, how can we really trust the accuracy of its data? And when we cannot trust its data, how can we trust the policies it had adopted and instituted based on it (questionable data)?" asked Salo.