Monday, October 09, 2006 PhilHealth eyes hike in benefits collection By Danilo V. Adorador III
PHILHEALTH in Northern Mindanao is aiming at increasing enrollment among the employed and individually-paying sectors and going after erring employers to boost collection.
Marlon Nio Arrabaca, public relations head of PhilHealth-10, said a mapping of all PhilHealth-paying companies are on-going to detect employers who are under-remitting contributions and those who are not remitting at all.
Arrabaca said the government's health care agency is also seeking to have idle members re-activated, increase payment among voluntary-paying members -- as a part of the two-pronged approach of expanding subscription and adding more funds to its coffers.
PhilHealth members in the employed sector pay an average of two percent 2 percent of their total monthly salary, or depending on their salary grade -- half of which is shouldered by employers.
In Region 10, there was still a need to improve remittances in the employed sectors, in part because of the employers reluctance to shell out their mandated share, Arrabaca said. Weak remittance is also observed among individually-paying members, he added.
These areas of concerns, however, are being addressed through aggressive campaigns targeting individually-paying members and holding negotiations with erring employers, he said.
"We still have not reached the point--and we hope we will not resort to that point -- where we have to go to courts to force employers to fulfill their obligations. We are still in the negotiation period because we believe this is the best way to ensure compliance," Arrabaca told this paper in an interview.
Among local government units that have PhilHealth membership programs, the PhilHealth official cited Bukidnon province as having one of the most efficiently-run health care systems in the region.
Bukidnon runs 15 provincial health stations and is erecting three modern hospitals to accommodate its indigent PhilHealth members.
In this way, the provincial government gets the re-imbursement back, making the program sustainable, Arrabaca said.
"The political will is there and the infrastructure support is already in place, making the program mutually beneficial to the sectors being served and the sponsoring LGU."
Cagayan de Oro currently has 34,000 indigent PhilHealth members, roughly half of them sponsored by the city government, the rest shouldered by the national government and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
Arrabaca said there is a need for the city to further improve its health facilities.
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