AnaKalusugan Party-list Rep. Ray Reyes (Screenshot from YouTube live)

AnaKalusugan Party-list Rep. Ray Reyes chided the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) on Friday, Oct. 13 for supposedly prioritizing the increase of its executives' pay over updating its anti-virus protection. 

"Inuna niyo kasi ang umento, imbes na anti-virus niyo (You prioritized the pay increase over your anti-virus)," Reyes said in a statement. 

Reyes was referring to the Commission on Audit’s (COA) 2022 report, which showed PhilHealth executives tripling their salaries in 2022, with some earning up to P500,000 monthly. 

The neophyte lawmaker said the data leak further underscores the fact that the PhilHealth officials' pay hike was both ill-timed and undeserved. 

In the same statement, Reyes expressed concern over reports that PhilHealth had been operating its anti-virus software on a one-month subscription basis. 

“Parang trial version lang? Ilang buwan na po ang lumipas nang unang maireport itong data breach at ang solusyon nila sa problema ay one-month subscription ng anti-virus software?" he asked rather incredulously.  

(Is this just a trial version? It's been months since the data breach was first reported and their solution to this was an anti-virus software with a one-month subscription?) 

The AnaKalusugan solon also scored PhilHealth officials for blaming the new government procurement guidelines for the non-renewal of its anti-virus software. “The expiry of the anti-virus software is on you. Way before it expired, you could have done what was needed to ensure data protection." 

He said the data leak would have been easily prevented had PhilHealth prioritized strengthening its cybersecurity measures over increasing its executives' pay.