The Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG) is supporting the proposal seeking to allow the Department of Finance (DoF) to take the lead in supervising the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

GCG Chairman Samuel Dagpin Jr. said this has been the recommendation submitted by the commission to President Duterte in 2017 following an operational audit with respect to PhilHealth’s performance.

“Our recommendation to the President is to transfer the supervising agency from the Department of Health (DoH) to the DoF primarily because this is an insurance business…That was our recommendation in 2017,” Dagpin told the Senate Committee on Finance subcommittee hearing the GCG’s proposed P192-million budget for next year.

While privatizing PhilHealth could be one of the options to remove corruption in the agency, Dagpin said he believes a reorganization of the PhilHealth’s management structure can help remove anomalous practices in the insurance agency.

While they are waiting for the Executive department to decide on the issues regarding PhilHealth, Dagpin said the GCG is already looking into the feasibility of separating the insurance agency’s collection and regulation function from its claims and benefits services.

“There is really a disconnect there because there is perceived collusion between the claimants and the PhilHealth system with respect to their demand to pay them services,” he said, responding to Sen. Imelda “Imee” Marcos’ question regarding GSG’s position on the proposal to privatize PhilHealth’s operations.

Dagpin also told Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian that the GCG itself is also disappointed at PhilHealth’s deteriorating performance over the past few years, noting that the state health insurance ranked low in the GGC’s Performance Evaluation Standard (PES).

“For the information of the committee, the current rating of PhilHealth did not even reach 50 percent for 2019,” he said.

Congress, he said, can look into the proposal of the GCG with regards to disintegrating some of the functions in PhilHealth’s system.

He said Congress can consider maintaining PhilHealth’s collection and regulation still under the jurisdiction of the government, while the claims and benefits services can be privatized.