THE Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) yesterday expressed support to a bill giving the President the power to suspend the scheduled increases of premium payments set by the Universal Health Care (UHC) law.
Under the UHC Law, PhilHealth’s premium contributions will annually go up until it reaches 5 percent in 2024.
PhilHealth acting president and chief executive officer Emmanuel Ledesma said the state insurer does not see any suspension adversely affecting the agency’s operations.
“With this, PhilHealth can continue assisting the Filipino people… I can assure all that not only shall the case packages continue to be maintained, but they will even be enhanced despite this,” he said.
PhilHealth spokesman Rey Balena said, “We have always been in support of such initiatives as we have supported the directive of PBBM (Marcos) to suspend this year’s contribution schedule to provide our kababayans with financial relief.”
“We will respect the wisdom of Congress on this issue,” he added.
In January this year, Marcos ordered the deferment of the premium rate increase of PhilHealth for 2023, which would have upped the member contributions from 4 percent last year to 4.5 percent this year.
Last Tuesday, the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading a bill giving the President the power to suspend the scheduled increase of premium payments. … Gerard Naval
