Un-finished business

While the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted already last May 5 its global alert against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, our Department of Health (DOH) declared the Philippines will keep its guards up. Philippine Red Cross (PRC) chairman, former Senator Richard Gordon fully agrees with the DOH to go slow in adopting the WHO advisory.

Gordon believes the DOH still needs the help of private sector organizations like the PRC and other support groups to further increase from the present 72 percent population immunity in our country. Speaking in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday, Gordon disclosed the PRC still maintains some of its molecular laboratory testing and vaccination centers in Metro Manila and certain parts of the country where there are still rising cases of COVID-19 infections.

If not managed well, Gordon warned, the WHO global exit out of the COVID-19 pandemic comes to naught.

Although the Cabinet post of the DOH Secretary remains unfilled, Gordon credited DOH officer-in-charge, Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire for her steadfast stance not to rush and kowtow to the WHO’s latest COVID-19 advisory. The Philippine government must keep its own independent policy-making, especially on matters that will greatly impinge upon our own country’s health system, Gordon argued.

The WHO first declared the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health emergency of international concern on Jan. 30, 2020. Two months later, then President Rodrigo Duterte closed all the borders in and out of the Philippines. A nationwide lockdown was likewise imposed in a bid to stop the further outbreak of the highly infectious COVID-19.

Still, the deadly COVID-19 infections spread to the entire Philippine archipelago despite all these State emergency measures. From the Wuhan strain, new variants evolved to much deadlier Alpha to Delta, and to highly transmissible Omicron. And the rest, as we say, is history.

In April this year, the first case of Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16 was detected in our country. This latest subvariant – also known as Arcturus – has now been detected in 33 countries. In a press statement, the DOH reported a continued increase nationwide of COVID-19 cases over the past weeks and is now averaging over 1,500 per day as of May 10.

Co-chaired by the DOH, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) has already discussed last week the latest WHO declaration. The IATF reported it is ready to submit their recommendations to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM). Now that he is back from three official trips abroad one after the other, PBBM has perhaps received by now the recommended policy reviews on new strategies while the COVID-19 subvariants remain as public health threats.

“The DOH, along with other members of the task force, are finalizing the recommendations through a draft proclamation, including the development of a ‘Pandemic Preparedness Plan,” the DOH announced.

During our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum, Gordon also revealed the State-run Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) has been ignoring the collection notices the PRC has sent to them. According to Gordon, the PhilHealth still owes PRC as much as P322 million for the COVID-19 testing services done. The COVID-19 test fee of P3,500 is chargeable to PhilHealth.

As the chairman of the PRC, Gordon threatens to finally ask the courts to compel the PhilHealth to remit the remaining balance.

Gordon told us what befuddles him is the insistence of PhilHealth for the PRC to show proof of the people they tested for COVID-19, whether with negative or positive results. All this time, he recalled, he has asked the PhilHealth leadership to assign their own personnel at the PRC molecular laboratories with the specific task just to monitor COVID-19 testing fees charged to them.

Instead of doing so, he fumes, the PhilHealth is making again the same demand they did that prompted the PRC to temporarily suspend its COVID-19 testing services in October, 2020. During that time, the PRC also had non-payment row with the PhilHealth that nearly reached over P1 billion. After so much hullabaloos, the PhilHealth-PRC payment dispute quieted down.

The financial condition of the PhilHealth could not possibly be the reason for its non-payment to its claimants such as the PRC. Under Republic Act 11223, or the Universal Healthcare Law, the PhilHealth premium rate was authorized to be increased to increments of 0.5% every year beginning 2021 until it reaches 5% in 2025. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was suspended.

However, the PhilHealth Board on Jan. 4 this year affirmed the order of PBBM to suspend anew the hike in premium rates and the income ceiling. This was to cushion the impact of inflationary pressures that have been eating much into the monthly salaries and daily wages of PhilHealth contributors.

Ergo, PhilHealth must be in solid financial position.

The PhilHealth, attached to the DOH, is one of the State firms placed under the supervision of the Government Commission on Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG). This brings to mind the proposed privatization of PhilHealth which was already being recommended by the GCG then headed by its erstwhile chairperson Samuel Dagpin Jr.

Under the GOCC Governance Act of 2011, the PhilHealth may be abolished and privatized by the President through the GCG even without going through Congress. Section 5 (a) of the GOCC law states that the GCG has the power to “evaluate the performance and determine the relevance of the GOCC, to ascertain whether such GOCC should be reorganized, merged, streamlined, abolished or privatized.” Even ex-President Duterte also batted the PhilHealth to be privatized.

As early as in 2020, Dagpin recommended already to the Office of the President “to transfer the supervising agency from DOH to the Department of Finance primarily because this (PhilHealth) is really an insurance business.”

What say you now, Mr. President to this un-finished business to privatize PhilHealth?