PhilHealth Suspends Collections As Opposition Grew Against Rate Hike
PHILHEALTH SUSPENDS COLLECTIONS – The Philippine Health Insurance Corp (Philhealth) received massive backlash after announcing a mandatory premium price hike for OFWs.
Based on the new Premium requirements, Overseas Filipino Workers with an income of P10,000 to P60,000 need to pay 3% of their monthly salary. This was an increase from the 2.75% contribution from the previous year.
The memo circular took effect last April 22 and stated that the monthly premium would increase by 0.5% per year. However, the increase stops after it reaches 5% in 2024.
According to a report from ABS-CBN, President of Philhealth Ricardo Morales stated:
May moratorium tayo sa collection. Obviously, paano kokolektahin iyon kung walang suweldo ang tao
He added that there would be no collection and computations due to the health crisis. Moreover, he stated that we should respond to the emergency first.
Around 3.6 million out of 10 million OFWs have enrolled in PhilHealth. In the previous year, Philhealth collected around P1 billion in premius from OFWs. Furthermore, Morales emphasized this was lower than the P1.7 billion in benefits claims.
Along with this, he also disowned that PhilHealth denies OFWs from leaving the country if premiums are not settled.
Meanwhile, there was already an online petition against the premium increase. So far, 387,000 have signed the petition out of its goal of 500,000 signatures.
Last year, there were controversies surround PhilHealth for allegedly having a mafia among its members. Thus, the people undermined its capabilities of giving affordable Universal Health Care to all Filipinos.
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