PhilHealth writes off P20.67B in unreleased appropriations while giving away P89.9B to deadbeat government

The financial statement of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. Or PhilHealth in September 2024 reflects P20.671 billion as “the Expected Credit Loss is 100% for Due from the National Government for the years 2016 and below.” The breakdown can be seen in Table 1.

The same financial document showed another P56.44 billion remained with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) as of September 2024. Thus, the amount withheld by DBM as of September 2024 was P77.11 billion. On top of those arrears, the Department of Finance asked PhilHealth to cough up P89.9 billion.

To put things in perspective, P77.11 billion is higher than the budget of the entire judiciary in 2025, which stood at P63.6 billion.

How immoral can a corporation get when it gives in to fraud while claiming financial stability?

The Secretary of Health is the guardian of the people’s health, and he sits as Chair of PhilHealth to assure adequate health financing for their health needs beyond what national and local governments can provide. The Secretary of Finance sees to the efficient management of PhilHealth’s financial resources. The Secretary of Budget and Management assures the legal uses of the funds in its care in the annual appropriations.

Yet it was this trio which forced the PhilHealth board to accept the memo and calculations of Deputy Treasurer Eduardo Mariño that PhilHealth had excess funds of P89.9 billion. Those calculations did not account for DBM’s impounding of PhilHealth’s 2023 appropriations worth P28 billion. The DBM admitted in the last hearing of Senator Bong Go’s Committee on Health, that the impoundment actually totaled P49 billion in 2023. This was reduced to P28 billion, because PhilHealth wrote off P20.671 billion.

The immorality of the actions of the trio has led to the defrauding of more than half the P89.9 billion non-existent “excess fund.” The implementation of the fraud led to a decline in members’ equity to P703.329 billion, a decline of P39 billion from the start of 2024.

The trio and their defenders continue to double down on the narrative of “excess government funds” in the face of DBM’s admission of the non-release of appropriations. The trio has convinced the Speaker and the Senate President that PhilHealth is awash with funds by harping on the two-year reserve fund of P280 billion, peddling the lie that PhilHealth only spends P140 billion a year. (See Table 2)

Using the 2024 data, the required two-year reserve, including an annual 20% increase in benefits and P10 billion in operations, should now be P420 billion.

The short-sightedness of the trio fails to anticipate the growth of benefit payments for the indirect members and dependents, which far exceeds the growth in benefit payments of the more numerous direct members and their dependents (65 million direct vs 36 million indirect).

The actions of the three are masking the real needs of the health sector and misleading policy makers into thinking there is an excess of funding.

The coming crisis of the health sector from all this fraud can be clearly laid at the feet of the trio of Secretaries and the politicians who crave for more pork, more than equitable healthcare.

While we talk of billions of pesos lost to fraud and pork barrel, our patients in the poorest communities of Metro Manila and rural communities can only endure with the patience of a carabao left out to bake in the sun.

On this year when PhilHealth was given zero budget by the government, let me cite two patients seeking healthcare.

In respiratory distress and after prolonged outpatient treatment and moving from one hospital to another and not getting admitted, my patient Nena (not her real name) was admitted late January this year to one of the major Department of Health hospitals in Metro Manila. When finally admitted, she was found to have aspergilloma in one part of her lung, a fungal infection that is difficult to treat. As an out-of-work canteen worker married to a construction worker, she had been enrolled by her local government unit (LGU) in Medicare para sa Masa, which the LGU subsequently failed to pay for, and the membership lapsed. The Malasakit Center promptly branded her as an unregistered member and asked her to pay two months of premium, otherwise she would pay for her hospital bill: “Kapag di raw naayos ’yung PhilHealth no choice daw magbabayad talaga ng hospital bills.”

My second patient Vangie (not her real name) lives in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental where she has long been complaining of abdominal pain. After undergoing an ultrasound, she was diagnosed with biliary ectasia and multiple gallstones; when advised to have surgery, she adamantly refused, begging for any treatment short of surgery.

She was clearly afraid of hospital costs since she was married to a sacada (sugar field worker) whose only resource is a carabao. Four days ago she had abdominal pain severe enough for her to go to the “emergency” (actually a lying-in clinic). Having been assured that PhilHealth would cover her costs in a government facility, she will be admitted either to the provincial hospital in Silay or the DoH hospital in Bacolod. She is still waiting till today for her procedure to happen.

The failures of PhilHealth come at a time when the country’s health system is deteriorating from the community level up. The Health Secretary only sees the overcrowding happening in DoH hospitals (as noted in the two cases above), but he fails to acknowledge that rolling out a primary care package through PhilHealth can revive the primary care system and ease the burden on hospital systems.

We continue to hope for the best for long-suffering Filipino patients like Nena and Vangie.

Jeepy Perez, a doctor of medicine, specializes in public health administration, primary healthcare, and has worked with nine Health Secretaries and three NEDA Secretaries since 1992. He has worked on community-based health programs, Philippine local health systems, the TB program, health information systems, and public and private reproductive health and family planning programs in the Philippines. He was undersecretary for Population and Development and executive director of the country’s Commission on Population and Development up to Sept. 8, 2022 when he retired. He occasionally writes for Action for Economic Reforms.