It’s costly to get sick

I was in sick bed at the hospital for five days. After a battery of tests, I was diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia, coupled with low potassium and anemia. Classified as moderate risk pneumonia infection, thankfully the early treatment did not worsen my condition.

This was actually my second time to contract pneumonia. I had one about four years ago. The symptoms to me felt familiar when 39 degree fever and bodily weakness set in last Friday while I was still at The STAR office. Initially, I thought I was having flu-like symptoms because I was also coughing a lot. Fortunately, I had no asthma attack to complicate my pneumonia.

I got sick two days after arriving back from a weekend trip in Hong Kong where my pilot-son made his grand wedding proposal to his long-time fiance. So STAR editors were teasing me I might have contracted bird flu. It was raining in cold winter in Hong Kong where temperature fell to 7 degrees when we left there last Tuesday night.

I had to cut short my office hours and rushed myself to the emergency room of the Las Piñas Doctors Hospital because it’s the nearest one to our residence. Before leaving the office, I knew I have to get myself hospitalized. I asked our accounting office to prepare my documents from PhilHealth (Philippine Health Insurance Corp.) and Medicard, our company’s health maintenance insurance.

It was a good thing that we have this PhilHealth insurance coverage for employed and self-employed people, including overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). It pays to be enrolled in this state-administered health insurance scheme, especially at crisis times like getting sick or needing hospital care when you need it most.

It is also good investment that our company enrolled us to a health maintenance insurance for added medical costs coverage. If not for these two health insurance schemes, the costs of being hospitalized these days are prohibitive. But just like any other insurance package, you have to pay for anticipated medical needs, whether you get hospitalized or not.

Recuperating at the hospital, I was, of course, still monitoring the news. Force of habit. To their credit, STAR reporters did not mind it as I direct news traffic from my sick bed even as they kept telling me to rest. No worries, I told them, it was less stressful doing work while resting at the same time.

While keeping myself mentally occupied in my sick bed, I came across GMA’s “24” TV newscast reporting about the effectivity of the increase in PhilHealth contributions starting this month. It was actually the implementation of PhilHealth Circular No. 2017- 0024 issued in November last year that imposed the increase in premium contributions.

The PhilHealth justified the adjustment as necessary to sustain the various enhancements to National Health Insurance Program (NHIP) benefits that have been introduced in recent years to alleviate health care costs.

Starting this January, PhilHealth members now have to contribute 2.75 percent of their monthly salary to the agency’s coffers. For the longest time, Filipinos only had to contribute 2.5 percent of their monthly salary. The increase in premium contribution marks a 0.25 percent additional deduction from our monthly pay slips. 

Aside from the increase in rates, the government health insurance agency will also forego the 28-tier bracketing system used to compute for the monthly premium. Under the new scheme, the rates have been simplified to include household members of the formal economy (kasambahay, family drivers) and sea-based overseas Filipino workers.

Newly installed Health Secretary Francisco Duque III noted the PhilHealth premium contribution increase is the first time ever after three decades since the agency was created. “This will double the actual solvency of PhilHealth’s reserve fund from the current four years to eight and a half years,” Duque cited. 

Apart from the increase in the PhilHealth’s budget through bigger contributions, the agency is also getting around P50 billion from the DOH’s P165 billion this year under the Congress-approved budget.

Given my latest experience with PhilHealth, I will not complain paying more to PhilHealth. Anyway, the government promised us fixed income earners we will receive more from our take-home monthly pay with the effectivity starting also this month of the Tax Reform Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law.

But what worries many fixed income earners in private sector, for sure, is the looming increase also in their monthly premium contribution to the Social Security System (SSS). 

It was announced in October last year by SSS president Emmanuel Dooc that the Social Security Commission would approve the increase in the contribution rate to coincide with the implementation in January of the first package of the tax reform package that would reduce personal income tax rates. Supposed to be starting January this year, the contribution rate of  members will be increased to over 12.5 percent of the monthly salary credit to enable the pension fund for workers in the private sector to cover the higher pensions of retirees.

The rate increase came in the wake of President Rodrigo Duterte’s order raising the monthly pension by P2,000 – for which the SSS already started disbursing the additional P1,000 last March.  The balance to follow before President Duterte’s term ends by 2022.

President Duterte also ordered that SSS members’ contribution rate be adjusted upward in increments of 1.5 percentage points per year until 2020 when it will have reached 17 percent from the current 11 percent. The current contribution rate of 11 percent is being shared by the employer (7.37 percent) and employee (3.63 percent).

As of yesterday, the SSS has not issued yet any rate hike notice. For now, it is better to stay healthy and fit. It is too costly to get sick. If we stay alive, it is only then we can enjoy our retirement pension from the SSS.