Bill on mandatory PhilHealth coverage to senior citizens inches closer to Senate passage

The Senate on Wednesday approved on second reading a bill that seeks to provide mandatory health insurance to senior citizens under the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).

Senior citizens who are neither lifetime members of PhilHealth nor indigents stand to benefit from the measure should it become a law, according to Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, author of Senate Bill 712.

Currently, only indigent senior citizens are entitled to PhilHealth coverage under the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

Recto said many senior citizens are “in the grey area of not being too poor to be officially classified indigents but still cannot afford to enroll themselves in PhilHealth.”

“The bill seeks to close this crack where many seniors fall,” Recto said in a statement Thursday.

“Enrolling them must be automatic, not optional. The ideal is that the minute they blow out the candles on their 60th birthday cake to the moment they breathe their last — they should be PhilHealth members,” he added.

Of the approximately 6.1 million senior citizens today, only 3.9 million were PhilHealth members as of June 5, 2014. Senior citizens are those 60 years old and above.

Recto said PhilHealth needs to cover 2.2 million more senior citizens, which would entail premium payments worth P5.2 billion a year, which could be sourced from the National Health Insurance Fund of PhilHealth. —Rouchelle Dinglasan/KBK, GMA News