PhilHealth retains premium rate amount for 2025
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) has kept premium rate contribution at five percent for this year or the same as last year’s figure, in accordance with the Universal Health Care Act.
“All direct contributors are hereby advised that the premium rate effective the applicable period of January 2025 remains at 5.0 percent, with an income floor of P10,000 and income ceiling of P100,000,” PhilHealth said in its Advisory No. 2025-0002.
This means that those with a basic salary of P10,000 have a premium rate of P500, while those with a monthly income of P100,000 must contribute P5,000.
The premium rate is in accordance with Section 10 of the UHC Act.
Under the UHC Law, PhilHealth premium contributions are set at 2.75 percent in 2019, three percent in 2020, 3.5 percent in 2021, four percent in 2022, 4.5 percent in 2023 and five percent in 2024 and 2025.
PhilHealth’s advisory came on the heels of the Social Security System (SSS)’s announcement of an increase in contribution rate from 14 percent to 15 percent, with 10 percent to be shouldered by the employer and five percent by the employee.
PhilHealth has also allayed concerns of private hospitals over unpaid claims.
“As to claims of our health facilities, payment will be taken from the investment portfolio which already reached P492 billion as of Dec. 31, 2024,” PhilHealth senior vice president for fund management Renato Limsiaco Jr. said at a briefing recently.
He said premium contributions this year would boost the health insurer’s resources that could be used for settling claims of hospitals.
The official added that PhilHealth president Emmanuel Ledesma had already instructed concerned offices to fast-track the processing of claims. “This is what our regional offices have been doing – claims processing,” said Limsiaco.
PhilHealth, he added, is also taking measures to improve its payment system.
“On the part of PhilHealth, we are doing this enhancement of claims processing,” Limsiaco said.
The state health insurer, however, appealed to hospitals to submit quality claims – and to do it earlier or on time.
“They should submit in a very fast manner so that PhilHealth will also be able to compensate in a fast manner,” Limsiaco explained.
“We need our health facilities to submit quality claims, meaning the signatories and requirements are complete,” he noted.
Earlier, the Private Hospitals Association of the Philippines Inc. (PHAPI) said that while it is in favor of increasing benefits for PhilHealth members, the state health insurer should pay hospitals’ claims on time.
“They would always say, they are fixing their system so that they can pay us on time,” PHAPI president Dr. Jose Rene de Grano said.
“We will see the effects of the increase in benefits. We will see after around two months if PhilHealth will be good on their job of paying us for the money we will be advancing in behalf of our members,” De Grano said.
OFWs protest SSS hike
Meanwhile, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), represented by Migrante International, have denounced the contribution rate increase in the Social Security System, which took effect this month, saying the government appears to be prioritizing the sustainability of SSS and the salaries of its board members over improving pension benefits.
“The value of migrant workers’ wages is already diminishing due to rising prices of food, electricity and basic services both in the Philippines and abroad,” Migrante’s deputy secretary general Josie Pingkihan said. “Now, the Marcos administration is forcing OFWs to shoulder even higher SSS contributions.”
“We call on the Marcos administration to scrap the SSS rate hike and end mandatory contributions that only worsen the plight of OFWs,” she said.
Organized labor has also sought a deferment of what it described as an “untimely and unjustified” increase in SSS contributions. – Mark Ernest Villeza, Mayen Jaymalin
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