Senator Risa Hontiveros on Thursday, February 16 lauded the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for increasing its coverage for outpatient hemodialysis from the current 90 to 156 sessions this year.

“We welcome the pronouncement on the planned expansion of dialysis coverage from 90 to 156 sessions,” Hontiveros said.

“Let's not disappoint our countrymen who rely on this financial protection. We expect the policy guidelines for this to be released soon and not have to wait until August,” the senator said.

“Every year we call for expansion and every year we hear many complaints from dialysis patients,” she pointed out.

Hontiveros said she hopes that the PhilHealth will move decisively towards the institutionalization of this benefit program and address most of its implementation issues.

Asked if there is a need to pass a law expanding PhilHealth dialysis sessions to make it permanent, she said legislators prefer giving the state health insurance agency the flexibility to come up with their own benefits program.

“As much as possible we don’t want a legislated benefits program to give PhilHealth the flexibility to design programs and benefits towards achieving Universal Health Care (UHC),” she said.

The lawmaker noted that during this past year, PhilHealth showed that they can expand their benefits, even without legislation.

“We hope that the DOH (Department of Health) and PhilHealth will work together to further reduce the out of pocket expenses of our dialysis patients and study to cover the medicines and others in the medical assistance program,” she said.

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