Restore ‘missing’ PhilHealth funds in 2026 budget, gov't urged

A group of medical experts on Tuesday pressed Congress and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to restore billions in funding allegedly stripped from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) in recent national budgets,

At a press conference, members of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) lamented how chronic underfunding has pushed poor Filipinos to beg for healthcare.

Dr. Antonio Dans, University of the Philippines College of Medicine professor, said frontline doctors consistently witness the “dehumanising” impact of budget cuts on patients, especially those in the poorest income groups.

“People in the poorest quintile are the ones we see begging for ways to get treatment. If the budget is affected, we are also affected,” Dans said, stressing that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Billions in unmet obligations

Dans detailed what he described as a three-year pattern of insufficient—and in 2025, zero—appropriations for PhilHealth’s legally mandated premiums for indigent and indirect members under the Universal Healthcare (UHC) Law.

For example, Dans said, the required premium for indirect members as mandated by law in 2023 was around P136.8 Billion, but the GAA had only allocated P100.2 Billion.

The DBM had only provided P50.7 Billion in actual cash, leading to a P86.1 billion deficit for the year, he said.

In 2024, the law mandates to fund PhilHealth with P129 billion, but the GAA had only allocated P61.5 billion and the DBM supposedly only released P9.5 billion.

Eventually, the P151 billion premium mandated for 2025 translated to a zero budget for the 2025 GAA and only P0.03 Billion in cash was released by the DBM, Dans said.

Dans said these gaps amount to a P356.6-billion shortfall from 2023 to 2025 alone, against the P416.8 billion that should have been allocated to PhilHealth.

“They should have allocated a total of P416 billion for the poor. In 2025, it became zero. That’s against the law,” he said, adding that DBM and Congress must explain where the “missing” allocations went.

Dans urged Congress to restore the P356.6-billion deficit, add the P147 billion in mandatory PhilHealth premiums for 2026, and reinstate the P60 billion that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier promised to return — a total proposed budget of P571.4 billion.

“Is that too much? It’s not. With the number of benefits offered, that’s still not enough,” he said.

Healthcare to ‘patronage’

Doctors also criticised what they described as the growing political control of medical aid, saying patients are now forced to seek “guarantee letters” and medical assistance from politicians or agencies instead of relying on PhilHealth.

“If health is truly a right, you shouldn’t kneel, beg, or line up for it,” Dans said.

He warned that the indigent fund has been turned into a “patronage fund,” with assistance tied to “who you voted for or will vote for.”

He noted that while PhilHealth allocations dropped, the Department of Health’s Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP) has ballooned—reaching P41 billion for 2025, larger than PhilHealth’s allocation for the same year.

“That’s against the UHC Law, which states that PhilHealth must be the principal payor,” he said. “Instead, senators, congressmen, mayors, governors, and partylists have become the main healthcare providers. That is self-serving.”

Doctors seek SC ruling

PMA president Dr. Hector Santos Jr. urged the Supreme Court to rule on the allegedly unlawful diversion of PhilHealth funds to the national treasury.

He argued that any PhilHealth “excess”—if indeed there was any—should have been used to increase member benefits or lower employee contributions, not reallocated elsewhere.

Former Health Undersecretary for Population and Development Dr. Juan Antonio Perez III said the health system is now “in crisis” due to distorted allocations that force patients to go through multiple layers of approval just to receive aid.

Return P60 billion

Earlier, the DBM said the P60 billion taken from PhilHealth would be restored in the 2026 budget using savings from the Department of Public Works and Highways.

The Department of Finance previously told the Supreme Court that the fund was redirected to:

• P27.45 billion for COVID-19 frontliner allowances
• P10 billion for medical assistance for the poor
• P3.37 billion for three new DOH facilities
• P4.1 billion to upgrade existing DOH facilities
• P1.6 billion for the Health Facility Enhancement Program
• P13 billion for government counterpart funding for foreign-assisted projects

—MCG, GMA Integrated News