Punongbayan & Araullo Accounting Firm Founder Benjamin Punongbayan suggested privatizing PhilHealth Photo collage from THEPHILBIZNEWS
By Alithea De Jesus
After the whistleblower resigned anti-fraud officer Thorrsson Montes Keith spilled the beans on the PhilHealth Officials in the alleged P15-Billion Fraud due to corruption, member contributors dreaded the forecast dry up the funds by 2022.
While resigned PhilHealth officials President and CEO retired General Ricardo Morales and SVP for Legal Sector Rodolfo del Rosario Jr. denied the charges of fraud and corruption the Senate recommended the filing of charges against them including Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, and other officials of the agency for alleged multi-billion peso anomalies.
For his part, Benjamin “BEN” Punongbayan, Founder of the illustrious Punongbayan & Araullo Accounting Firm and Chairman of Buklod, a national political party, suggested that privatization of the part of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) would prevent corruption in the agency and arrest imminent bankruptcy and would serve its mandate to ensure a sustainable national health insurance program for all.
“The big-scale corruption has hit hard on PhilHealth, the centerpiece of the country’s universal care system. Realistically, it will take a long time to unravel the scope and extent of that corruption”, according to Punongbayan. “What is more important at this stage is how to minimize, if not prevent, future corruption. That task will prove to be very difficult mainly because of the prevailing national attitude of benign neglect of corruption in government, he added.
Punongbayan said that a more effective measure, under the circumstances, is to privatize a substantial part of Philhealth’s activities. For this matter, Buklod advocates and supports the privatization of government functions to the extent doing so is possible.
Interestingly, a bill has been filed in the House by Deputy House Speaker and Marikina Rep. Miro. Quimbo proposing the privatization of Philhealth, although the bill did not specify how the privatization should be done. But just the same, Buklod supports a move towards this direction.
On a broad view, Punongbayan asserts that at the minimum the activities that should be privatized are the processing of claims and delivery of payments. The government may continue to handle the approval and preparation of payments. In this way, there is a check and balance that will minimize, if not prevent, corruption. The collection of members’ contributions may continue to be handled by the government, although this function may also be privatized the collected funds, as well as government fiscal appropriations, will continue to be under government control.