Universal Health Care law to raise PhilHealth contributions
Credit to Author: CATHERINE A. MODESTO| Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2019 12:41:23 +0000
THE implementation of the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act will mean an increase in monthly contributions for public and private sector employees to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), a spokesman for the government-owned-and-controlled corp. said on Monday.
Shirley Domingo said under the new law, higher contributions would be imposed on employees with a monthly salary of P50,000 and above starting in July from the previous P40,000.
This means that those who receive a monthly basic salary of P40,000.01 to P49,999.99 will pay P1,100.03 while those earning more would contribute P1374.99 every month.
Those whose salary is P10,000 and below will contribute P275.
PhilHealth deducts 2.75 percent of the monthly salary of each employed member, half of which is shouldered by the employer.
Domingo said that Republic Act (RA) 7875 as amended by RA 10606 allowed PhilHealth to raise its rate to 5 percent.
This means that for every year following the effectivity of the law, the rate will also increase by .5 percent.
PhilHealth is an attached agency of the Department of Health (DoH) and manages the National Health Insurance Program (NHIP), which covers 98 percent of the population or 104.5 million of the 106.4 million in 2018.
The DoH said it needed about P257 billion to introduce reforms after crafting the implementing rules and regulations of the UHC which, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, would focus on primary health care, the “most efficient and cost effective way to achieve universal health coverage around the world.”
The vision is that all Filipinos should be taken care of by a primary care team who would look after all their health care needs within their community by 2040, Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd said in an interview.
Duque said previously that the department has a funding gap of about P40 billion because of budget cuts.
Senator Jose Victor “JV” Ejercito, one of the vice chairpersons on the Committee on Finance and the chairman of the Committee on Health and Demography, previously said that close to P40 billion was pooled from the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways by both the House of Representatives and the Senate during bicameral deliberations on the General Appropriations Bill to address this problem.
Ejercito said that P18 billion was added to the DoH budget for UHC programs. At least P16.796 billion for the Health Facilities Enhancement Program and P4.797 billion of the P7-billion requirement for the DoH’s Human Resource for Health Development were also restored by lawmakers.
The appropriation is enough to cover the first two years of UHC implementation, the lawmaker said.
The UHC law or Republic Act 11223 was signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte on February 20.
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