PhilHealth’s P60-B excess funds went to frontliners, hospitals, meds —Recto

Finance Secretary Ralph Recto on Thursday said that the P60 billion excess funds returned by the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) to the national treasury were used for health-related projects.

PhilHealth was ordered to return P89.9 billion in excess funds to the national treasury.

Last year, it already remitted P60 billion before the Supreme Court (SC) issued a temporary restraining order to halt the transfer of the remaining P29.9 billion.

During the resumption of the oral arguments on the PhilHealth funds, Recto told the SC that the P60 billion was redirected to the following: 

• P27.45 billion to pay the allowances of COVID-19 frontliners
• P10 billion to the Social Programs for Health to provide medical assistance to poor Filipinos 
• P3.37 billion for the establishment of three DOH facilities
• P4.1 billion to strengthen existing DOH facilities
• P1.6 billion to the Health Facilities Enhancement Program
• P13.00 billion to fund the government counterpart financing for foreign-assisted infrastructure and social determinants for healths projects.

“Your Honors, the P60 billion that was returned didn’t vanish—it paid frontliners, built hospitals, and gave the poor access to medicine. Every centavo remitted was converted into service. That is fiscal justice,” Recto said.

Meanwhile, Recto stressed that the P89.9 billion that PhilHealth was ordered to return were government subsidies that remained unused and not from member contributions. 

“It bears stressing that not a single centavo meant for the members’ coverage was touched. Not a centavo of benefits was compromised,” Recto said.

“PhilHealth’s daily operations and benefit packages remain intact. They will not be disrupted but will even be improved.” he added.

During his interpellation, Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen questioned Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra whether the PhilHealth funds could be used for non-health-related projects.

Leonen asked whether these could be used for performance bonuses of the government personnel, the peace process, or foreign-assisted projects, among others.

Guevarra replied in the negative.

Leonen then presented Special Allotment Release Orders (SARO) showing the allocations of the funds remitted by the PhilHealth and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation.

He said P35 billion was used for the government counterpart in foreign-assisted projects.

“Health or not health? ” Leonen asked. “Not health,” Guevarra answered.

Another SARO was “for payment of personnel benefits,” Leonen said.

Guevarra said that the funds from PhilHealth went to the national treasury and not directly to a specific purpose.

“Your Honor, the money taken from PhilHealth went to the Treasury, commingled there in the Treasury for proper application to the various uses enumerated in the unprogrammed appropriations,” he said.

Leonen said this was “worse.”

“Because it was put in a fund not for health in general but was commingled … so there’s no way that we can see that all of it was done for health,” he said.

Guevarra, however, said they could prove that the funds for PhilHealth were only used for health-related projects.

“Because we have a list of the SAROs, listed, or rather, issued by the DBM and showing for which particular purpose under the unprogrammed appropriations that particular SARO was applied,” Guevarra said.

“We have seen this, and we have found that almost the entire amount of P60 billion, which came from the fund balance of PhilHealth, was applied to health-related projects,” he added.

The oral proceedings stemmed from the petitions asking the High Court to issue a TRO and/or a writ of preliminary injunction to prevent the transfer of PhilHealth funds.—AOL/VBL, GMA Integrated News