Go: Reforms necessary to rid PhilHealth of corruption

MANILA, Philippines — Institutional reforms in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) are necessary to solve the problems plaguing the agency, Sen. Bong Go said yesterday.

Go, chair of the Senate committee on health and demography, also proposed the preventive suspension of PhilHealth officials accused of committing fraud to protect the integrity of the investigation to be conducted by a task force led by the Department of Justice.

“I think the problem here is investigative bodies won’t be able to move thoroughly if the suspects are still in the agency,” he said in Filipino.

He said he probed deeper into the allegations of widespread corruption in PhilHealth during the second hearing of the Senate committee of the whole on Tuesday.

He proposed studying existing policies and amending the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees to allow preventive suspension before the start of an investigation to avert any undue influence.

PhilHealth president Ricardo Morales assured senators of the agency’s cooperation in assisting the task force’s investigating corruption in the agency and providing relevant data and information needed in the inquiry.

Morales also expressed his openness for him and all officials to submit to a lifestyle check and other investigations of the government.

Last year, Go asked the Commission on Audit to conduct a special audit on PhilHealth’s funds and submit its findings to the Office of the Ombudsman. However, COA chair Michael Aguinaldo said efforts were delayed due to quarantine measures which prevented auditors from accessing PhilHealth offices.

“We are looking at their (information technology) systems because, before general Morales, we had encountered difficulty in accessing their IT database for various reasons. Although recently we were able to access it,” he said.

The senator asked the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) to confirm findings that the agency’s “ineffective” legal sector had bolstered the spread of fraudulent activities in PhilHealth.