EDITORIAL - Fixing PhilHealth

If billions of pesos in funds went unused in the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., it was a sign of gross inefficiency on the part of the PhilHealth leadership, according to critics. Apparently, President Marcos agrees.
Yesterday, the President swore into office a new PhilHealth president and chief executive officer. US-trained orthopedic surgeon Edwin Mercado replaced Emmanuel Ledesma Jr. on the same day that the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on petitions questioning the legality of the impounding by the national government of P89.9 billion in PhilHealth funds for 2024 together with the “savings” of all other government-owned and controlled corporations. The impounded GOCC “savings” were used to finance the new congressional pork barrel, the unprogrammed appropriations.
Mercado, a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and Harvard Medical School and with experience in hospital management, takes over an agency that has been embroiled in corruption scandals and other controversies for several years now. Rodrigo Duterte had four PhilHealth chiefs in his six years as president.
With people seeing mismanagement as a serious problem in PhilHealth, much had been expected of Ledesma, an investment banker who took over from PhilHealth OIC Eli Dino Santos in 2022. Ledesma was an economics graduate with concentration in management also from UP, and obtained an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the US state of Illinois.
Yet health advocates say he leaves PhilHealth with a deficit of over P600 million and a whopping P1.13 trillion in insurance contract liabilities, plus a serious fund underutilization that Congress used as an excuse to impound the P89.9 billion, and then to give the state health insurer zero subsidy for 2025.
A public health advocate says members of a group involved in PhilHealth anomalies are still in the agency. The advocate is pushing for digitalization in the PhilHealth system to deter fund misuse.
Quality healthcare remains out of reach for millions of Filipinos. The scandals in PhilHealth have further derailed the full rollout of the Universal Health Care program. Everyone is hoping that Mercado can clean up the mess at PhilHealth.
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