Malacañang on Saturday twitted left-leaning lawmakers for claiming the administration’s plans to issue PhilHealth health insurance cards to the poor may be a gimmick for the midterm election in 2013.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda branded the critics of the plan as “myopic” for not seeing the bigger picture of “poverty alleviation.”

“Napaka-myopic ng tingin ng nasa kaliwa. Hindi ba tawag nila Bayan Muna? Anong kinakana nila. This is for our poverty alleviation program,” he said on government-run dzRB radio.

He said the PhilHealth cards are part of the administration’s efforts at “serving the people” and fulfilling its promises “to alleviate poverty.”

Besides, he said the basis of who to give the PhilHealth cards to is not political but a national household targeting system.

The system aims to identify the poorest of the poor, and is also the basis for determining the beneficiaries of the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, he added.

Earlier reports quoted Gabriela Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan as saying the PhilHealth cards might be used to win votes in next year’s mid-term elections.

The report also said the Health Department is asking for P56.8 billion, P12.6 billion of which would go to PhilHealth premiums covering 5.2 million households. — LBG, GMA News