Senate pushing for scholars’ budget hike, PhilHealth expansion

MANILA, Philippines - The Senate committee on finance is working on increasing the allocation for government scholarships and widening the coverage of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) in the proposed P3.35-trillion national budget for 2017.

Senators Loren Legarda and Juan Edgardo Angara, chair and vice chair of the panel, respectively, pushed for increased allocations for Department of Health (DOH) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) during deliberations on the proposed budgets of the two agencies last week.

Legarda, principal author of the Mandatory Universal Healthcare Coverage Act, moved to increase the DOH’s proposed P144-billion budget by P3 billion to DOH to attain the government’s target to have all Filipinos covered by PhilHealth next year.

The additional allocation will cover eight million Filipinos still not covered by PhilHealth.

“In the 2017 budget, we will cover all Filipinos under PhilHealth, and for indigent patients, they will not pay for anything in government hospitals under the ‘no balance billing (policy)’,” she said.

Angara called for higher budget allocation for the government’s scholarship program to give free college education to more poor and disadvantaged students in the country. 

Under the 2017 budget proposal, P5.6 billion of the total P13.4-billion budget for the CHED is allotted for its scholarship programs. The proposed funding increased by P3.4 billion from this year’s allocation.

With the budget hike, CHED chairperson Patricia Licuanan said the number of scholarship beneficiaries would rise to 437,522 in 2017 from 271,209 slots this year.

Legarda and Angara asked the CHED how much it would cost to give free college education to all students enrolled in state universities and colleges (SUCs).

Licuanan said the price tag would be P258 billion a year, factoring the increase in enrollment in SUCs with students migrating from private schools.

At present, approximately 4.1 million students are enrolled in higher education institutions – 1.9 million of whom are enrolled in public schools and 2.2 million in private schools.

Given that the cost of free college education for all would to be too hefty for the government to shoulder, the senators said the government should first prioritize the poorest of the poor in providing free education.

Of the current enrollment in SUCs, Licuanan noted only eight percent came from the bottom socio-economic class.