A lawmaker on Thursday sought a congressional investigation into allegations of massive fraud and operational mismanagement allegedly committed by key officials of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
In filing House Bill 1928, Negros Oriental Rep. Arnolfo Teves said the alleged anomalies reflect on the alleged lavish lifestyle of PhilHealth interim president Celestina Ma. Jude de la Serna who reportedly spends P3,800 daily in Philhealth money to pay for her hotel accommodation.
Teves said De la Serna has been staying at Legend Villas in Mandaluyong for about a year now.
“So flagrant were the abuses that Speaker Alvarez furiously left a meeting with De la Serna as she insisted that she was never made aware that her hotel expenditures are unacceptable in government,” Teves said following a meeting between PhilHealth official and House leaders last Wednesday.
Teves, the vice chairperson of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, asked House committee on good government and public accountability to conduct an investigation into “the gross financial and operational mismanagement, corruption, as well as the proliferation of fraud” at PhilHealth.
“There should be a need to safeguard the finances of PhilHealth as it is the most important element to be able to provide quality healthcare,” Teves said.
He also disclosed that De la Serna sought an audience with Alvarez last Wednesday to explain her side over allegations of mismanagement and fraud committed under her watch.
He said De la Serna admitted being billeted in hotels while attending to her duties in Manila but claimed she did not know disbursing her expenses from Philhealth is “an unacceptable practice," Teves said.
“We will dig deep into her other expenditures as our sources have claimed that many such expenses are wasteful and too extravagant,” Teves said.
Teves said lavish spending is unacceptable especially when “majority of Filipinos cannot afford quality healthcare” because of the poor performance and mismanagement.
Earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered an investigation into De la Serna’s travel expenses. She allegedly spent at least P627,000 for her trips to and from Bohol in 2017.
The Commission on Audit earlier disclosed that PhilHealth posted a net loss amounting to P8.92 billion in 2017. The amount was reportedly adjusted later by the audit agency to a still whopping P4 billion in net loss.
Meanwhile, former PhilHealth president Alexander Padilla rejected allegations that he, in connivance with former Health Secretary Janette Garin, illegally diverted the P10.6 billion in PhilHealth fund intended for senior citizens to the Department of Health in 2015.
Although he admitted that PhilHealth requested for the amount from the Department of Budget and Management—the request letter was earlier presented to the media by Health Secretary Francisco Duque last Wednesday—Padilla said the DBM did not grant the request.
“Ang pinapakita lamang nila ay ang letter request na ginawa namin ni [ex-Health Secretary Janette] Garin asking for P10.6 billion. Ngunit itong request na ’to was never granted by DBM,” Padilla said in a television interview.
“Hindi ito pinayagan ng DBM. In fact meron akong subsequent letters nung December of that same year requesting for the same amount na maibigay sa PhilHealth dahil galing ’yan sa sin taxes,” he added.
Duque earlier said that the letter was is an “evidence by itself” that the P10.6-billion fund for the expanded Senior Citizens Act was diverted from its original use.
Duque said Garin and Padilla intended for the diverted fund to be used instead for the construction of rural health units.
But Padilla explained that the DBM had ruled that the funds allocated for health infrastructure should be taken from savings from the Mutual Benefit Funds and not from PhilHealth.
He added that the bidding and procurement were conducted by the Department of Health (DOH).
“Ang sinasabi nilang ginamit na pondo para sa health infrastructure ay nanggaling, ito ay ayon sa DBM, ay nanggaling sa savings from the Mutual Benefit Funds. Yun po ang ginamit na para sa DoH. So ang PhilHealth wala rin namang kinalaman dun. Ang bidding and procurement ay sa DoH mismo. So wala hong pondo natanggap ang PhilHealth para ma-divert dahil hindi nangyari yun,” he said.
Padilla said that by law, senior citizens are covered by PhilHealth, which was the context for the request for the fund.
“Walang nape-prejudice na senior citizens dahil by law, covered ho ang senior citizens, whether indigent or hindi,” he said.
“Pinag-aralan ng DBM. Kung papayagan ng DBM wala tayong problema. Kung hindi naman papayagan wala ring problema, sisingilin lang sila paulit-ulit ng PhilHealth, which I did subsequently,” Padilla added.
As this developed, Duque said the DoH and PhilHealth will try to get the P10.6-billion fund back.
“We’ll await for what the DBM will say,” he said. “I think we will include this in the 2019 budget. We need to recover it… because, again, this will influence the long-term sustainability of the system,” Duque said.