MANILA, Philippines — It was a “contractual employee” feeling “vengeful” after not getting the position he desired that led to concocted allegations of “widespread corruption” in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), its president and CEO Ricardo Morales said yesterday.
Morales was referring to lawyer Thorrsson Montes Keith who resigned last Thursday as PhilHealth anti-fraud legal officer. His resignation came after a shouting match with Morales and other officials during a Zoom conference on Wednesday.
Morales called Keith a “contractual employee” who applied for a position that he is “not qualified to handle.”
“I think he wanted to replace Bal Laborte,” Morales said in a radio interview. “I don’t know him and being an executive assistant is a position of confidence.”
Keith and Estrobal Laborte, Morales’ head executive assistant, are among the three PhilHealth officials who were
reported to have resigned Thursday night during a Zoom meeting during which they engaged in a heated argument over corruption at the Department of Health.
The other one is PhilHealth corporate legal counsel Roberto Labe Jr. who “vehemently denied any news of his resignation.”
Morales added that Laborte had tendered his resignation in the middle of July and will take effect by end-August, to “go back to taking his PhD.”
He denied insinuation that he was the one who brought Laborte to PhilHealth because they are both graduates of the Philippine Military Academy.
In his letter of resignation dated July 23, Keith, who identified himself as “anti-fraud legal officer” of PhilHealth, said he was tendering his resignation effective Aug. 31.
He cited various reasons for resigning such as “rampant and patent unfairness in the promotion process and widespread corruption in PhilHealth.”
Keith claimed he had strongly opposed the mandatory payment of PhilHealth contribution by overseas Filipino workers and that his salary and hazard pay “has not been on time” since his initiating an investigation of officers of PhilHealth.
But for Morales, Keith’s claim that he is the anti-fraud legal officer of the agency was not true because such a position does not exist.
He said that Keith should have revealed if he had evidence of corruption at the state insurer.
Morales added he believes there is no widespread corruption at the agency but “inefficiencies” in transactions as he underscored that PhilHealth handles around 50,000 reimbursement claims per day.
“I don’t think it is corruption but inefficiencies. But corruption involving syndicate or a mafia, I don’t think so. There is no evidence on that yet,” he maintained.
He reiterated that even the Commission on Audit did not find evidence on earlier accusations that PhilHealth had lost some P156 million to ghost patients and anomalous transactions.